





Rook 


PRESENTED RY 







































THE 


MESSAGE 

% 

OF 

MOHAMMED 


BY 

ARDASER SORABJEE N. YVADIA, M.A. 

Sometime Professor of English and History, Elphinstone College, 
Bombay : Dakshina Fellow in Natural Science. 


WITH 

FRONTISPIECE BY E. J. SULLIVAN, A.R.W.S. 


“This day have I delivered My Message and fulfilled My 
Mission: I have left amongst you a plain command, to wit, 
the Book of God and manifest Ordinances of which if ye take 
fast hold, ye shall never go astray.”— Last Sermon. 





1923 

NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & CO. 

All rights reserved 


.\iV» 


“ The Prophets are the products of the spiritual necessities 
of their age, and are no mere accidents nor their lives mere 
unconnected episodes in the history of the world.” 

Carlyle. 


SIFT 

PUBLISH »i< 



PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 


CONTENTS 



V d 


Epistle Dedicatory 

CHAP. 

I. The Struggle of Mohammed . 

II. The Allah of Mohammed 

III. The Islam of Mohammed 

IV. The Najat of Mohammed 

V. The Iman of Mohammed 

VI. The Din of Mohammed 

VII. The Shariat of Mohammed . 

VIII. The Future of Islam . 

Index ...... 


PAGE 

ix 

I 

17 

• 39 

55 

61 

. 81 

• 97 

• 131 

• 157 


v 


“We do not think that either Mohammed or any of his 
Eastern predecessors has spoken the last word on the question 
of prophetic religion: but, on the other hand, we are be¬ 
coming prepared to recognise that the Man of Mecca really 
heard a Divine Voice and exercised a Divine Commission.” 

E. V. Arnold. 


EPISTLE DEDICATORY 
Go 

Gbe /IIMtsUms of 3nbta 


‘‘Islam is a prophet’s cry, Semitic to the core; yet of a 
meaning so universal and so timely that all the voices of the 
age take it up, willing or unwilling, and it echoes over palaces 
and deserts, over cities and empires, first kindling its chosen 
hearts to world-conquest, then gathering itself up into a 
reconstructive force that all the creative light of Greece and 
Asia might penetrate the heavy gloom of Christian Europe, 
when Christianity was but the Queen of Night.” 


Johnson. 


EPISTLE DEDICATORY 


My Fellow-Countrymen, 

Perhaps the most significant and certainly the 
least expected of the many changes which the 
vast upheaval of the late war brought in its 
train was—the Awakening of Islam. In that 
Awakening no people took a more prominent 
part nor any toiled more to maintain the honour, 
integrity, and independence of Islam and demand 
fair play and justice for her than the Muslims of 
India. To whom, therefore, could this book of 
mine be more fittingly dedicated than to those 
who have so worthily upheld the cause which is 
its own subject-matter of discussion? 

Long ago Reland observed that “no religion 
had been more calumniated than Islam/’ That 
observation of Reland is as true to-day as on the 
day it was made. And the greatest offenders 
in this direction, as might well be guessed, are 
the Christian expounders of Islam. Even those 
of them who, like Sir William Muir and Washing¬ 
ton Irving, have approached their subject with 
the avowed intention of being scrupulously fair 
and just, have invariably ended with a veiled 
traducement of Islam and of its great Founder 
—a traducement which by its insinuations and 
innuendoes have done more harm and greater 

ix 


X 


THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


injustice to both than open and sweeping 
condemnations of their declared enemies like 
Koelle and Forster. 

And there will or can be no abatement of the 
complaint to which Reland gave voice until the 
Christian Critic, giving up for once his superior 
ways and patronising attitude towards Islam, 
goes to it in a truly and really sympathetic vein, 
following the method and manner of St. Paul 
as described in his famous First Epistle to 
the Corinthians: 

“For though I be free from all men, yet have I made 
myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. 

“And unto the Jews, I became as a Jew, that I might 
gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as 
under the law, that I might gain them that are under 
the law; 

“To them that are without law as without law, that 
I might gain them that are without law. 

“To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain 
the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I 
might by all means save some.” 

If we replaced the word “gain” in the above 
texts by the word “understand,” it would 
reveal to us the right spirit in which matters 
religious ought to be approached to get at their 
basic truth and extract permanent values out of 
them. Anyhow this is the spirit in which I went 
to my task, and it was in this spirit I wrote out 
the Message. Consequently, for the contents of 
the following pages I lay no claim “to novelty 
of fact nor to profundity of research,” but only 
to the fact that “though I be free from all men, 


EPISTLE DEDICATORY 


xi 


yet did I for the time being make myself ser¬ 
vant unto the Prophet of Islam and became as 
a Believer of his Creed, that I might gain the 
Prophet and understand his Creed.” 

But it is not enough to get at the basic truth 
of a religion or extract permanent values out of 
it; for a religion, like all terrestrial things, waxes 
old with the passage of time. And your religion, 
Muslims of India, is no exception to this general 
rule which time enforces on all things that be. 
The obvious way, therefore, of meeting the 
ravages of time in the matter of religion is to 
infuse new life into it in consonance with the 
life around. To accomplish this at all success¬ 
fully the sheer mechanical enforcement of the 
Prophet's commands and enjoinments, the mere 
otiose observance of his rules and regulations 
will have to be replaced by something approach¬ 
ing a more living and willing adoption of them as 
a warning from the past acting as an inspiration 
for the future. In other words, we must recast 
old beliefs and revaluate past traditions and trans¬ 
figure them into breathing, palpitating realities 
that have an inward significance and immediate 
application to life as we see around us. 

You, my fellow-countrymen, are the heirs of 
all the ages if you will but accept your inheri¬ 
tance ! And you can be true and worthy leaders 
of Moslem thought in all Islamic lands if you 
will but learn to study your great Faith for your¬ 
selves and, overcoming the mental inertia of 
taking your beliefs ready-made, think out your 


xii THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

religion for yourselves and form concepts and 
cherish convictions which, while illuminating the 
abiding meaning of life, have a more vital, 
present-day significance. Only on this condition 
will Islam become a truly inward possession of 
vast potentiality and present use to you in the 
day-to-day fulfilment of the purposes of your 
existence Here and in laying, stone by stone, 
“the basements and foundation-rooms” of the 
life Beyond. More, on this condition only will 
you be able to retain and preserve intact the 
massive simplicity, the wonderful adaptability, 
and the innate, inalienable, and impellent free¬ 
masonry of Islam. 

A. S. WADIA. 


“Woodlands,” Chembur, Bombay, 
January i, 1923. 


P.S. TO EPISTLE DEDICATORY 

Since writing the above Epistle Dedicatory, I 
received from Mr. E. J. Sullivan the drawing he 
had undertaken to do for the Message and which 
now appears as a frontispiece in the book. A 
glance at the picture will disclose something so 
strikingly unusual about Mohammed’s profile and 
expression that my Moslem readers, unless they 
are artists, will be sorely tried to reconcile their 
own fair conception of their Prophet’s face with 
the one delineated by Mr, Sullivan in the photo- 


P.S. TO EPISTLE DEDICATORY xiii 


gravure. It would be a pity if Mr. Sullivan’s 
art was on that score misunderstood by them. 
I therefore feel the necessity of adding a line 
here in explanation. I would, in the first in¬ 
stance, ask the Moslem reader to defer judgment 
while he joined me in making a little experiment. 
To commence then, let the reader imagine the 
face of the Prophet at the age of twenty-five, 
the noblest and handsomest he could conceive of 
—with smooth skin and creaseless brow, a beard 
full and flowing, and features moulded after the 
most approved classical model. On this fine 
faultless face of twenty-five, let deep meditation, 
hard climate, and inexorable time leave, year in 
and year out, their indelible impress, and at the 
end of fifteen years the handsomest face in the 
world will have lost much of its youthful bloom 
and look a little pinched and hard-pressed. Then 
let this face somewhat pinched and hard-pressed 
undergo a month of acute spiritual and mental 
struggle intensified by long fasts and longer vigils 
—such as few men are ever called upon to under¬ 
go, and it would indeed be a matter of surprise 
if the resulting face in any one instance differed 
radically or even materially from Mr. Sullivan’s 
conception of it. There is, besides, a leading point 
in that conception which demands special notice 
here. That great art-critic Ruskin has some¬ 
where said that there are three ways in which 
an artist can draw a man’s face. One in which 
the mere accuracy of features is aimed at, an¬ 
other in which an attempt is made to catch a 


xiv THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

leading trait or a select aspect of the face, and 
the third in which no thought is given to features 
nor even to select aspects of the face, but to 
that particular expression which the man wore 
“in the most excited instant of his life, when all 
his secret passions and all his highest powers 
were brought into play at once—an instant when 
the call and claim of some divine motive had 
brought into visible being those latent forces 
and feelings which the spirit’s own volition could 
not summon nor its consciousness comprehend, 
which God only knew and God alone could 
awaken.” It is this one supreme moment in the 
Prophet’s life which Mr. Sullivan has attempted 
to seize and portray in his drawing—a moment 
when all that lay submerged and struggling in 
the inmost depths of Mohammed’s soul welled 
up of a sudden on his face at beholding in the 
intense darkness of the cavern a celestial being 
bearing him a Message from on High. 

A. S. W. 


THE STRUGGLE OF MOHAMMED 


B 


"The early struggles of a heroic soul, the tentative work 
of its later years, the period in which it feels the strange 
stirrings of its powers, yet sees no arena for their play, and 
its final emergement from uncertainty into the one definite, 
infinite line of life—all these movements and their conse¬ 
quences can never be studied in vain.’’ 


Marshall Mather. 


CHAPTER I 


THE STRUGGLE OF MOHAMMED 

Man, it is said, is a creature of circumstance.' 
No saying is truer than this, and yet there is 
none more false. This dual aspect of the saying 
is in no case better exemplified than in that 
of the great Prophet of Arabia. For his life 
and teachings are in many aspects the direct 
outcome as in many others in total contradiction 
of his circumstances. Nevertheless, circumstances 
in a very real sense hold the key to the right 
understanding of the religion of Mohammed and, 
consequently, no study of Mohammedanism ought 
truly to commence without a preliminary inquiry 
into the nature and condition of the country 
in which Mohammed was born and the people 
among whom he lived, moved, toiled and ended 
his days. 

The country of the Prophet's birth was not of 
the kind and character with which most of us 
are ordinarily familiar—a country composed of 
towns and villages, teeming with life and vege¬ 
tation, art and industry, with extended stretches 
of land traversed by roads and rivers and inter¬ 
spersed with wooded hills and verdant valleys. 
The country was not of this description, nor 
anything approaching it. But it was a land of 

3 


4 


THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


arid waste and sandy desolation, where water 
and verdure were things unknown and where 
the blazing sun parched up and crumbled every¬ 
thing into particles of sand by day, and by night 
the cutting winds carried on the never-ceasing 
work of destruction by spreading over all a 
thicker and ever thicker shioud of sand which 
lay everywhere heavy and inert like a veritable 
mantle of forgetfulness. However, in this grim 
picture of a dead, rainless world nature intro¬ 
duced a few touches of life and colour—here by 
oases of pools of sparkling water and clusters of 
date-palms, and there by the shifting tents of 
wandering Bedouins or by the more permanent 
habitations of settled Arabs. 

This strange land of silence and solitude was 
inhabited by a type of humanity equally strange. 
The Arabs, being the children of the desert, 
developed qualities very much in keeping with 
their wild, arid surroundings. They were a hard, 
tough race of men who, being unused to gentler 
modes of life and thought, knew no mercy and 
no compassion. Though habitually slow of speech 
and action, when once their feelings were roused 
they were swift to return an insult or an injury, 
and their blood-feuds were often continued from 
generation to generation. Thus, while sedulously 
nurturing in their hearts these vindictive feelings 
they, strangely enough, were carried away by 
extravagant, almost quixotic notions of hospitality 
which, as in the other case, often overstepped the 
bounds of reason and good sense. For instance, 


THE STRUGGLE OF MOHAMMED 5 

an Arab thought little of killing his last goat 
or sheep to entertain his guests, and would 
sooner have his son murdered than let a hair 
of his worst enemy be touched while he was 
resting under his roof. 

This wild and lawless people had, besides, a 
regular passion for poetry, and their passion was 
such that not a fair was held but had its poetical 
contests. At these gatherings there came from 
all parts of the great continent the votaries of 
that fickle muse, and when they had recited their 
varied compositions, those judged best were then 
transcribed on silk in letters of gold and hung 
up in their national shrine. 

Isolated from the great nations of the world, 
the Arabs lived their little lives and slept their 
long sleep unaffected by the wars and polity, 
ambitions and cupidity of other people. The 
armies of the Caesars and the Chosroes had for 
centuries marched and re-marched on their fron¬ 
tiers without affecting their elemental sloth, and 
often in the wake of the caravans great ideas 
filtered through the desert-sands to their distant 
ears but left undisturbed their profound slumber 
of ages. These ancient people were divided into 
tribes. Each tribe was independent and had a 
chief of its own who ruled because he was the 
bravest and wisest of them all and best fitted to 
lead and guide them. Few Arabs had settled 
occupations. The Bedouins led a wandering 
pastoral life, while the rest were employed 
in some kind of commercial pursuit mostly in 


6 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


connection with the caravans that crossed 
and re-crossed their desert country. One such 
centre of the commercial activity was the city 
of the Prophet’s birth—Mecca. 

Mecca is one of the oldest cities in the world 
and in a sense the most interesting of them all. 
Old histories and deathless traditions seem still to 
haunt its paved ways and crumbling walls to an 
extent unknown in the case of other cities of 
equal fame and age. It is to this day an im¬ 
portant centre for the caravans bringing their 
rich merchandise from the north and the south 
as in the days of Jacob and of “the kings of 
Arabia and Saba” we read of in the Psalms. It 
still possesses, fresh and limpid, the spring of 
Zem-Zem which tradition associates with the 
wanderings of Hagar and Ishmael, and the 
world - renowned Kaabh with the mysterious 
Black Stone is to-day as much the most ancient 
and sacred object of reverence as it was in the 
days of Abraham and Diodorus Siculus. Here 
in this fane of ancient renown were ranged the 
three hundred and sixty idols round the great 
god Hobal, carved of red agate, with his two 
ghassalas, stags of gold and silver, and the images 
of Abraham — that “Saturnian father of the 
tribes”—and of his son. Here came the tribes, 
year after year, to kiss the Black Stone which 
had fallen from heaven in the primeval days of 
Adam, and here they stripped themselves to make 
the seven circuits of the temple naked. 

Thus, from the remotest antiquity Mecca was 


THE STRUGGLE OF MOHAMMED 


7 


not only the meeting-point of all the religious 
thought and fervour of the Arabs, but also 
the great emporium for the industrial output 
and commercial enterprises of the neighbouring 
nations. For from Mecca irradiated the caravans 
which carried to the Byzantine dominions and 
to Imperial Persia the rich and rare products 
of Yemen and of the far-off Ind, and returned 
therefrom laden with the still richer silks and 
rarer stuffs of Syria and of the Persian cities. 
Their commercial activities unfortunately were 
not confined to mere articles of trade, but ex¬ 
tended to other goods of more doubtful enter¬ 
prise and utility. For in the train of these 
caravans came the slave-girls of Greece and 
Persia with their unfailing concomitants—Wine 
and Song; and these beguiled the idle hours 
and ministered to the lower instincts of the 
citizens, both rich and otherwise. The Meccans, 
in consequence, and in a lesser degree the Arabs 
as a class, were irreclaimably addicted to drinking 
and gambling, and became inordinately fond of 
music and dancing, and so fell an easy prey to 
the immoralities and dissoluteness that generally 
follow in the wake of these pursuits. For instance, 
the professional dancing-girls, kayna as they were 
called, whose ministration to the lewd tastes of 
men was, as in other Eastern countries, a thing 
of common notoriety, were held in high esteem, 
and the greatest chiefs thought nothing of paying 
court to them in public. Rank polygamy, more¬ 
over, prevailed everywhere, and it was left to 


8 


THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


the sweet will of a man to have as many women 
as he chose for his wives. The women, in conse¬ 
quence, were looked upon as mere chattels in a 
man's household, and at his demise his widows 
—other than the mother—became a part of the 
patrimony, and as such passed into the use of 
the son: and as if to give a finishing touch to 
the singular practices of these people came the 
horrible custom of burying alive infant girls. 

It was in a society of people given to such 
strange ideas and practices of life and in a coun¬ 
try so markedly different in its physical aspect 
and so very deficient in the prime necessities of 
existence that the Prophet was born and brought 
up, lived his chequered life, and delivered his 
immortal message. His chequered .life up to a 
certain stage recapitulates in a way the whole 
course of human progress itself. No sooner was 
he born than he was, as was the custom in 
Mecca, handed over to the care of Bedouin 
Vomen. Consequently, for the first five years of 
his life he had, so to say, a free run of the vast 
stretches of the open desert and retained all his 
life a strong recollection of the wild free wandering 
existence he led there. For the next seven years 
he was destined to lead a life of an entirely dif¬ 
ferent character. Being left an orphan and having 
inherited but little from his father, it became 
necessary for him to earn his living. He was for 
that reason turned into a little shepherd and was, 
in consequence, compelled to pass seven long 
years of his boyhood within the narrow precincts 


THE STRUGGLE OF MOHAMMED 


9 


of Mecca. But the same barren hills of Mecca 
which in those years so closely walled in his 
physical activities could not shut out his growing 
mind from indulging in incipient meditation and 
his expanding imagination from roaming over 
their limiting contours into the vast spaces 
beyond. And he was not left long to imagine 
those vast expanses beyond, for when he was 
about twelve, Abu Talib, his uncle, who was an 
enterprising merchant, projected a caravan to 
visit Bostra in Syria, and no arguments of age 
and hardship on his part could keep back his 
equally enterprising nephew from joining it. It 
was on this journey that he for the first time 
came in living contact with different modes of 
life and opposing ideas of religion, and the scenes 
of social misery and religious corruption that he 
observed there made a lasting impression on his 
young mind. In his old age he often recalled 
those scenes, which, however, provided him with 
ample food for thought and speculation for the 
next twelve years he was fated to pass once 
more within the encircling hills of Mecca. 

In the twenty-fifth year of his life, a chance 
of leading a commercial mission and revisiting 
the scenes of his early travels came again his 
way and he eagerly seized it. So successfully and 
with such scrupulous fidelity did he carry out 
the objects of the mission entrusted to him that 
his companions named him Al-Amin, the faith- ^ 
ful, and the rich widow, who had sent him out 
on the expedition, set a seal of her approval of 


10 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


this high opinion by inviting him to her home and 
offering him her hand and her heart. Though 
fifteen years his'^^nior, she was exceptionally 
well-preserved and remarkably good-looking; and 
in spite of this great disparity of age, for all the 
twenty-five years of their married life no couple 
in Mecca was happier or more single-mindedly 
devoted to one another than Khadijah and her 
youthful husband. She seems to have early 
understood Mohammed’s true and generous 
nature and faithfully shared all his varied trials 
and endless struggles as only a woman and wife 
could. To Mohammed the marriage brought, 
besides a loving woman’s heart, that leisure, 
quiet, and exemption from daily toil which he 
needed to prepare himself and his mind for the 
great work which lay before him and of which he 
was then not in the least bit conscious. 

He was, of course, conscious of the great 
shortcomings of his people and their really piti¬ 
able helplessness in every direction, and knew well 
that things as he saw around him could not for 
certain continue long. He knew, for instance, that 
the petty quarrels and sectional jealousies which 
embittered feelings and split the tribes and 
townships of Arabia into so many hostile camps 
must somehow cease and the debasing rites and 
gross superstitions of rival creeds and sects must, 
sooner or later, be given up. But that he was 
designed by Nature to be the instrument for 
carrying out her secret project and bringing about 
the great reform he was far from being conscious. 


THE STRUGGLE OF MOHAMMED n 


And yet so completely was he absorbed in the 
preparation of the work which unknown to him 
awaited him, and in such enure seclusion did he 
pass his days, that we hear of him but once in 
the course of the next fifteen years. And that was 
when at the rebuilding of the Kaabh he was called 
upon to settle the dispute as to which of the Mecca 
clans had the right of replacing the sacred Stone. 
The ingenious way he settled the point in dispute 
to the satisfaction of all parties concerned should 
have at once marked him out in the eyes of his 
fellow-citizens as a man of great resourcefulness 
and commanding intellect with deep understand¬ 
ing of men and matters. But with that proverbial 
blindness of human beings to incipient greatness 
and intellectual worth, the Meccans after having 
had the Stone replaced with perfect unconcern 
went their way, and with equal unconcern 
Mohammed went his. 

And his way lay once more towards the grim 
rocks of Mount Hira, there to meditate and find 
some solution of the problems that obsessed his 
soul and emaciated his body. Those were the 
same old eternal problems about the mystery of 
the Creation and the purposes of Existence that 
have ever weighed down the body and worn out 
the spirit of those rare silent souls who can never 
bring themselves to walk in empty formulas nor 
dwell in the shews of things. He wanted the rocks 
of Hira to tell him—Whence he had come, Why 
and for What he was there, and Whither he was 
bound ? But the rocks stood dumb and answered 


12 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


him not! Many a night he spent under the blue 
vault of heaven and asked of its myriad eyes as 
to who made them, but those myriad eyes merely 
twinkled and the great heaven rolled silently 
overhead and heeded him not. And yet all the 
while the great Reality stood glaring upon him 
and seemed almost to be vocal in its very silence. 
In circumstances like these a man of less buoyant 
temperament would have long lost heart and after 
repeated failures of fifteen years given up the 
Quest as vain and unprofitable. But Mohammed 
was made of different and sterner stuff: and 
failures, in consequence, seemed only to spur 
him on and give a keener edge to his quest and, 
in consequence, he pursued the objects of his life 
more vigorously and more determinedly than 
ever. Especially was this the case during the 
month of Ramazan when each year he betook 
himself to his favourite cave on Mount Hira for 
days and nights together, there to fast and 
pray for the illumination. But the illumination 
never came! 

On one occasion, however, after passing an 
unusually peaceful evening of quiet meditation, 
as Mohammed lay wrapped in his mantle between 
the silent watches of the night, he heard or 
seemed to hear a Voice calling upon him. Un¬ 
covering his head he peered in the impenetrable 
gloom around him, when, lo, he beheld in the 
distance a luminous point of light which as it 
approached him took shape and formed itself 
Mnto a heavenly figure holding a long scroll 


THE STRUGGLE OF MOHAMMED 


*3 


between its outstretched arms. “Read!” com¬ 
manded the mysterious being, holding out the 
scroll to him. “But I cannot read,” protested 
Mohammed. Three times the mystic figure com¬ 
manded and three times Mohammed protested, 
when of a sudden by some secret process he 
seemed to decipher the contents of the scroll 
and to scan those famous verses proclaiming the 
greatness of the Lord who hath made man and 
created all things. In that one tense moment 
of fully-awakened consciousness he seemed to 
have touched the secret spring of life and solved 
the eternal problem of existence. 

But that moment was only of short duration! 
For reaction soon set in and he again became as 
restless and as distracted as ever, and even 
doubted if after all he had really received a 
divine revelation or was it that some evil spirit, 
taking advantage of his long fast and over¬ 
wrought feelings, had played a mean trick upon 
him? As was his wont he hurried to his ever- 
faithful Khadijah and apprised her of his strange 
experience and his fears, and she, with her never- 
wavering faith in him and his great destiny, 
unhesitatingly replied: 

“God is my protection, O Abu’l-Kasim. He will not 
surely let such a thing happen unto thee; for thou 
speakest the truth, dost not return evil for evil, keepest 
faith, art of a good life, and kind to thy relations and 
friends. And neither art thou a babbler in the market¬ 
place. Rejoice, therefore, O dear husband, and be of 
good cheer! He in whose hands stands Khadijah’s life is 
my witness that thou wilt be the Prophet of His people.” 


14 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


As events proved, Khadijah with her true 
womanly instinct saw deeper into the future 
than Mohammed with all his penetrating intel¬ 
lect and wider grasp of things. But her deep faith 
in him and all her tender love for him did not 
help Mohammed to get over the doubts and mis¬ 
givings that had taken possession of his mind. 
In her great anxiety for his growing melancholy, 
Khadijah sought the help and counsel of her 
cousin Waraka, who, though old and blind, was 
deeply versed in the scriptures of the Jews and 
of the Christians. The old man calmed her 
anxieties, and subsequently when he met Mo¬ 
hammed in the streets he drew him aside and 
told him what he himself thought of his vision: 

“Verily, the Namus-i-Akbar , 1 O Abu’l-Kasim, has 
come to thee—the same who came to Moses! They 
will, to be sure, call thee a liar. They will persecute 
thee. Nay more, they will banish and fight against 
thee. But be of brave heart, O Abu’l-Kasim! Would 
that I could live to those days that I could fight 
for thee!" 

The enthusiasm of the blind old tottering 
figure touched Mohammed to the quick, and his 
words of hope and trust brought for a while 
comfort to his troubled spirit. But it was only 
for a while. Once again he was a helpless victim 
of spiritual throes and his mind was being alter¬ 
nately torn between nameless hopes and baseless 
fears: and to such an extent that often on his 
lonely vigils on Mount Hira he was tempted to 

1 The Message of the Almighty. 


THE STRUGGLE OF MOHAMMED 15 

hurl himself down from one of its steep crags 
into the abyss below and thus end once and for 
ever his seemingly endless struggle. But an in¬ 
visible hand seemed ever to hold him back, and 
a voice seemed to issue from the very stones 
and rocks around, calling upon him to desist and 
urging him to fulfil the mission that lay before 
him. What, however, that mission was, no hand 
came to point out, nor any voice to proclaim or 
even to suggest. Being thus unable to put an 
end to his existence, he endured as best he could 
that horrible mental torture that comes of divided 
will and unstable convictions. 

For three long years that state of solitary 
suffering and mental torture continued uninter¬ 
ruptedly, till one evening the same mystical 
figure that had wakened him from his trance 
at his first initiation once again stood before him 
and read aloud the message it was charged to 
deliver to him: 

“O thou, enwrapped in thy mantle! 

Arise and Preach! 

Thy Lord—magnify Him! 

Thy raiment—purify it! 

The abomination—flee it! 

And bestow not favours, 

That thou mayest receive again with increase; 

And for thy Lord wait thou patiently. 

For when the trumpet shall sound 

Verily, that day shall be a day 

Of distress and uneasiness unto the infidels!” 

These visions of Mohammed are rather a difficult 
subject to tackle. One does not know what exactly 



16 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


to make of them. Were they real visions? Or 
were they mere hallucinations of a mind distraught 
. and prone to epilepsy? Or, worse still, were they 
mere pious elaborations on the part of his multi¬ 
tudinous chroniclers lavishly endowed with imagi¬ 
nation and not overburdened with scruples about 
truth and reality? On subjects like these it is 
best to have an open mind. But whichever side 
we might be disposed to lean through force of 
temperament or insurmountable prepossessions, 
there is no gainsaying the fact that these two 
visions, whether hallucinations or pure delusions, 
burnt deep into Mohammed’s mind and memory, 
and so deeply that his whole soul was set aflame 
by them and his entire outlook on life was changed 
for him. After the second vision he no longer 
went about sullen and morose with hesitating 
steps and care-worn face, betraying distrust 
alike of himself and of the Power that sent 
him, but moved like one who was in complete 
possession of himself and bent intently on an 
errand of great moment to his people. In other 
words, with the reception of the second vision 
ended the Struggle of Mohammed. 


THE ALLAH OF MOHAMMED 


“ Whatsoever your mind can conceive, 

That Allah is not, you may well believe.” 

Jellaluddin Rutni. 


CHAPTER II 


THE ALLAH OF MOHAMMED 

It is possible that the reader, who is conversant 
with the life and career of the Prophet, will 
have read with surprise the statement I make 
at the close of the foregoing chapter that the 
struggle of the Prophet’s life really ended when 
he had received the second vision. He would 
probably maintain that the most anxious and 
vexatious period of his life really commenced 
with that vision, inasmuch as the ridicule and 
persecution, the virulent opposition and ulti¬ 
mate banishment which old Waraka had pre¬ 
dicted, did not overtake the Prophet till after 
this memorable event in his life. In fact, some of 
the leading chroniclers of Mohammed’s life con¬ 
sider the ten years following this call to “Arise 
and Preach” as the most remarkable period of 
his whole career, since during those dreary long 
years of waiting not only were his powers of 
endurance and forbearance put to a severe test, 
but—apart from his own abiding faith in the 
vision he had seen and the call he had heard, 
and the loyal support that Khadijah unfailingly 
gave him,—there was nothing to sustain him in 
his great purpose and endeavour. 

19 



20 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


Such a view, I admit, is largely true, and I 
would have had no hesitation in accepting the 
reader’s contention in this direction, were we 
discussing the life and career of an individual of 
brilliant parts and attainments or even of a 
man of extraordinary talents and character. But 
Mohammed, truly speaking, was neither. Though 
sternly practical and eminently tactful, Moham¬ 
med was essentially a man of ideas and dreams. 
With such men the struggle of life lies not with 
the world without but with the world within 
them. The battle of their life is the one incessant 
fight they have to put up at certain stages of 
their spiritual evolution against the inner demons 
of doubt and distrust, disorder and despair. Once 
these demons are laid low, and the soul has 
secured its footing, it faces with comparative 
equanimity the ridicule and persecution of the 
great outer world, the conquest of which is then 
a mere matter of time and patience. The reason 
is that the slow, silent forces unchained from the 
abysmal depths of a single superior human being, 
no matter how thwarted and nullified at first, 
must unfailingly work their way through the 
chequered passage of time and come eventually 
to rule the mind and impulse of humanity at 
large. I believe, therefore, that the period during 
which Mohammed underwent the most crucial 
test of his life was the one which preceded the 
advent of the second vision. 

That crucial test having once been passed, the 
way lay straight before him, littered though it 


THE ALLAH OF MOHAMMED 


21 


was with obstacles formidable enough to have 
quailed the stoutest heart not so firmly fixed 
in faith as Mohammed’s was. The two visions 
granted to him, however, gave him a good start. 
For one thing, they taught him that the aim of 
human existence should be the Quest of the 
Absolute, the goal of human ambition to Realise 
Him, and the end of human endeavour to Glorify 
Him, first by securing a complete mastery over 
one’s own self and then by utilising the disciplined 
energies thus liberated in the service of one’s 
fellow-men. That Mohammed may carry out this 
divinely-appointed task, it was essential that he 
should in the first place be acquainted with the 
fundamental nature of the Eternal Himself. And 
as if in response to that vital need of his, came 
the famous sura, which is in a way the key of 
the Koran and the central theme of Mohammed’s 
message to mankind: 

Say: He is God one and alone, 

God the Eternal, 

He begetteth not, and He is not begotten, 

And there is not one like unto Him. 

The famous Kalimet 1 was but the great sura 
condensed for the practical needs of daily life. 
The perfect and absolute Unity of the Eternal 
was the keynote of the Prophet’s first ministry 
as it was the burden of his last sermon. In a 

1 La ilaha ilia Allah, Mohammed rasul Allah —There 
is no object of worship but God and Mohammed is 
the Messenger of God. 


22 


THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


hundred different ways he taught that funda¬ 
mental article of his faith, and on a thousand 
different occasions he recited and reiterated that 
magic formula, which being rubbed into the bones 
of his immediate disciples, now circulates in the 
blood of hundreds of millions of his followers all 
over the world. Yet this leading tenet of Islam, 
which now courses in the vein of every Moslem 
alive and which finds a ready response even from 
those who are outside the Prophet’s fold, was 
when first proclaimed openly derided and sum¬ 
marily rejected by the very people for whom it 
was primarily intended: so totally and so hope¬ 
lessly were the Meccans in the grip of their 
three hundred and sixty timber idols presided 
over by the red agate Hobal, with his lieutenants 
—the two stags of gold and silver. 

To a large number of thinking minds Idolatry 
in any shape or form is hateful—a thing demean¬ 
ing and demoralising. To Mohammed it simply 
spelt death—death of all that ennobles man and 
lends distinction and meaning to his life. Yet 
Idolatry, like other things of the mind and 
created matter, is not bad in itself. On the 
contrary, in one of its forms, known as Fetishism, 
it plays quite an important, nay an indispensable 
part in the evolution of rational creatures. It 
then, far from demeaning human nature, actually 
elevates it by distinguishing it from brute nature. 
Consider what would be our dusky brother of 
Central Africa without his Mumbo-Jumbo? And 
how would we know our Bonnie Cannibals of the 



THE ALLAH OF MOHAMMED 


23 


Malay Isles from the man-apes around them, 
were they deprived of their Totems and Jotems? 
Idolatry, therefore, is not to be condemned as 
such. In fact, Idolatry, taken in its more literal 
sense, is a kind of symbology. 1 And symbols in 
one shape or another we all vitally need, both 
high and low. Anyhow, whether recognised as 
such or not, we are encompassed by them; and 
consciously or unconsciously we are making and 
remaking them every day of our lives. Not a 
line we write but is a visible imprint of an in¬ 
visible idea, nor a thing we devise but is a 
tangible token of an intangible conception. Con¬ 
sequently idols—so long as they stand for and 
visualise real definite ideas, in other words, be¬ 
come the embodiments and revelations of invisible 
realities—serve a useful and necessary purpose in 
the economy of nature and, as such, cannot be 
condemned. But when idols have abdicated this 
vital function of theirs and embody nothing but 
the wood and stone of which they are made, 
then it is that they become mischievous, and 
degiade and demoralise their simple-minded 
votaries. The three hundred and sixty idols of 
Mecca once stood for ideas that were real and 
definite; but with the passage of time and con¬ 
sequent evolution of the Arab mind they gradually 
came to lose most of their piistine spiritual value, 
till at the time of Mohammed’s birth they were 
reduced to such gilded, soulless anachronisms in 


1 Eidolon, a thing seen: and latreuein, worship. 


24 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

timber and bee’s wax that they served no real 
religious purpose nor performed any vital func¬ 
tion at all. Before long they would assuredly 
have fallen through sheer neglect and decay, were 
they not outwardly patched and propped up by 
the superstitious awe of the untutored Arabs and 
the interested zeal of the mercenary Meccans. 

Mohammed’s keen eye had long taken note of 
the intolerable state of things around him and his 
soul burned to put an end to these degrading 
scenes of gross superstition and triumphant 
hypocrisy. But being one among a million to 
feel as he did, he was rather diffident and fully 
realised his helplessness to remedy the evil. How¬ 
ever, when the visions came, strange power 
seemed to come with them and fill his body and 
mind with unwonted vigour and enthusiasm. 
Indeed, such an accession of strength and spirit 
had he received from them that not long after 
their coming he felt himself strong enough to 
stand up for his own convictions and defy the 
combined might of the hypocritical Koreish and 
the superstitious Arabs. He, therefore, openly 
denounced the worship of the idols, held up to 
ridicule the fatuous ministrations of the Koreish 
hypocrites and exhorted the Arabs to mend their 
ways by giving up their evil practices and joining 
him in the worship and service of the one and 
only God— Alldh-ta'-aldh . 1 

Such a bold and uncompromising proclamation 
of his own individual convictions naturally gave 
1 The Most High God. 


THE ALLAH OF MOHAMMED 


25 


offence to everybody. “Who is this youth that 
presumes to preach to us as if we were mere 
children?” questioned the Elders of the Koreish, 
“Whence comes this sage that dares to rebuke us 
all as mere fools and worshippers of wood and 
stone?” For the peace and harmony of their 
little community the Elders thought it much the 
wiser course, before taking any definite step 
against the obstreperous spirit, to try and wean 
him from his folly and rashness by a little quiet 
advice administered to him by a man of ripe 
age and experience. With that object in view 
they summoned Abu Talib and asked him to 
use his influence with his nephew and stop him 
from inciting the people to rash acts by his 
irresponsible preachings. The aged patriarch, 
readily complying with their request, called his 
enthusiastic nephew to him and bespoke him to 
give up his presumptuous practice of preaching 
to the people on subjects on which he was still 
much too young to speak with any authority or 
even conviction. “There is no harm in your 
holding what opinions you liked for yourself,” 
concluded the good old man of caution and 
worldly prudence, “but you should not declare 
them openly to the populace.” Mohammed, 
after saying how much he felt beholden to 
his uncle for his well-meant advice, made the 
famous reply: 

“Oh, my noble uncle, if the Elders brought the sun 
and the moon and placed them on my right and on 
my left to force me to give up my appointed task, verily 


26 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


I would not yield unless the Lord Himself came and 
commanded me or I perished in the attempt.” 

That this was no vain effusion of a hot-headed 
enthusiast but the cool and deliberate resolution 
of a man of character and strong conviction the 
subsequent events only too conclusively proved. 
From that resolution Mohammed never swerved 
nor did he ever regret having made it, though 
in the meantime he had to endure the pangs of 
utter isolation at home and submit stoically later 
on to a long and bitter exile which ended in his 
adopting a measure most hateful to him—namely, 
of waging war on his own people. 

But to the labours of the body as to the travails 
of the soul one day there assuredly comes a rich 
reward in the shape of the fulfilment of the pur¬ 
pose for which they were endured. In the case 
of Mohammed that long-deferred day at last 
dawned in the sixtieth year of his life when he 
stood before the walls of Mecca with his small 
band of brave and faithful followers. No army 
came out to oppose him and the city, which had 
made an outlaw of him and cast him out, was 
now at his mercy. But all thoughts of revenge 
or punishment were instantly brushed aside, so 
great was the Prophet’s love of his native city 
and such a compassion he felt for his old, erring 
fellow-citizens. With feelings of deep reverence 
he entered the Holy City and went straight to 
the Kaabh and made the customary seven circuits 
of the sacred building. And then struck the 
supreme hour of the Prophet’s life,—the hour 


THE ALLAH OF MOHAMMED 


2 7 


for which he had panted from his earliest youth 
and to which he had sacrificed the best years of 
his manhood. When he had completed the last 
of the seven circuits and all his disciples had 
hurriedly gathered round him, wondering what 
would follow next, Mohammed broke the tensity 
of their feelings by slowly advancing towards the 
giant figure of Hobal. He significantly raised the 
staff he carried in his hand and pointed it to the 
figure and the next moment hundreds of his 
followers fell on it and smashed it to pieces. 
The turn of its three hundred and sixty com¬ 
panions came next and one by one they all 
toppled down, and when the last of the dumb 
brotherhood had crashed to the ground, the 
Prophet raised his hands to heaven and ex¬ 
claimed: “Truth is come at last and falsehood 
has fled away: verily, falsehood is a fleeting 
thing.” And in response the disciples rent the 
air with the shouts of— Allah-o-Akbar! The 
Meccans who were standing around, silently 
watching the proceedings, dared not move a step 
to save the gods of their fathers nor did they 
raise their voice in protest when Omar turned to 
the pictures of Abraham and the angels and 
scratched them off the walls in obedience to the 
Prophet’s command. And finally Bilal, that 
Ethiopian slave of the Prophet and the first 
and noblest of the muezzins of Islam, brought 
that eventful day to a close by calling the 
faithful to prayer. 

From that Day of Deliverance to this the 



28 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


beautiful chaunt of the muezzin’s call 1 to prayer 
is heard across the domes and minarets of Mecca 
and to this day through the Holy City there 
resound in response public prayers in the same 
grand old words of the Prophet as of yore: 

“ Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds! 

The Merciful, the Compassionate! 

King of the Day of Fate. 

Thee only do we worship, and to Thee do we cry 
for help. 

Guide Thou us in the Path that is Straight, 

The path of those to whom Thy love is great. 

Not of those on whom is Hate, 

Nor of those who Deviate!” 

Such an enthusiasm indeed did the Prophet’s 
entry into Mecca kindle in the neighbourhood 
that great numbers of both sexes came to him 
during the succeeding days and voluntarily sub¬ 
scribed to the new faith by taking the oath of 
allegiance. On these occasions every man while 
taking the oath placed his hand on that of the 
Prophet and repeated after him, word by word, 
the second or Great Pledge of Al-Akabah: 

“We will not associate anything with God. 

We will not steal, nor commit adultery nor fornication. 

We will not kill our children: 

We will abstain from calumny and slander: 

1 “ God is great! God is great! 

There is no object of worship but God, 

And Mohammed is the Messenger of God. 

Come to prayers! Come to prayers! 

Prayer is better than sleep! 

So, arise, ye Faithful! 

And come to prayers! Come to prayers! ” 



THE ALLAH OF MOHAMMED 


29 

We will obey the Prophet in everything that is right: 

And we will be faithful unto him, 

And remember him in the hour of our victory and 
our defeat.” 

With the overthrow of idolatry in Mecca and 
the raising of the standard of Islam in that Holy 
City, the one great object of the Prophet’s life 
was indeed accomplished. But it must not on 
that account be supposed that his mission to 
humanity was fulfilled or even that the training 
of his disciples was completed. Idolatry had 
indeed been tracked down and rooted out of the 
heart of Arabia once and for ever, but that did 
not mean that simultaneously with the rooting 
out of the evil the worship of the one and only 
God was automatically enthroned in its place. 
One cause in particular worked against such a 
consummation being brought about. And it was 
the idea of the godhead which was current among 
the neighbouring nations, who were the heirs of 
ancient civilisations and followers of religions long- 
established and widely-accepted. Of these the 
principal were the Jews, the Christians, and the 
Mago-Zoroastrians. Among them once prevailed 
pure monotheism as simple and as undefiled as 
Mohammed preached several centuries afterwards. 
But with the passage of time and change of en¬ 
vironment various foreign elements found a secret 
entrance and tainted the pristine purity of these 
monotheistic creeds. The consequence was that 
the Ahuramazda of the Gathas split up into the 
Hormusd and the Ahriman of the later Avestas, 


30 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


and the Jehovah of Moses into the Lord and the 
Satan of the later Judaism, and the Father of 
Christ into “the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost " of the Nicene Creed and Pauline Chris¬ 
tianity. Mohammed knew that a similar catas¬ 
trophe awaited his own ideas of the godhead 
and that sooner or later the secret canker of 
Magian-Mosaic duotheism or Paulo-Christian tri¬ 
theism and other anthropomorphic and anthro- 
popathic conceptions of the Deity would assuredly 
find an entrance and eat into the heart of his 
pure monotheism. So he seized every opportunity 
to caution his disciples and solemnly warned them 
against the danger and exhorted them— 

“To worship God alone, and join not aught with 
Him in worship. The Jews say, ‘Ezra is the son of 
God’; and the Christians say, ‘Christ is the son of 
God.’ Such are the sayings in their mouths! They 
resemble the sayings of the infidels of old! May God 
resist them! How misguided are they! To follow their 
priests and their monks and take Jesus, son of Mary, 
for Lord beside God, though enjoined to worship one 
God only. There is no object of worship but God. Far 
from His glory be what they associate with Him. Fain 
would they extinguish the light of God with their 
mouths! 1 . . . Therefore, O ye people of the Book, 
beware how ye overstep the bounds of your religion! 
And of God, utter nothing but the truth! Verily, Christ 
Jesus, son of Mary, is only a prophet of God, and his 
Word which he conveyed unto Mary, and a Spirit pro¬ 
ceeding from Himself. Believe, therefore, in God and 
his Prophets, and say not ‘There is a Trinity.’ For¬ 
bear this! God is only One God. Christ, be it remem¬ 
bered, disdaineth not to be a servant of God. 2 . . . 

1 Sura ix. 30-32. 2 Sura iv. 169-70. 


THE ALLAH OF MOHAMMED 


31 

They say, ‘The God of Mercy hath begotten a Son/ 
Now have they not uttered a monstrous thing? ” 1 

According to Mohammed, Allah 2 is one and 
eternal, indivisible and indefinable, not endued 
with form nor circumscribed by limit; the First 
and the Last, the Outer and the Inner; without 
issue or similitude, comprehending all things but 
comprehended of nothing. “God was not like 
any object that the human mind can conceive" 
said the great Caliph Ali, “no attribute can be 
ascribed to Him which bore the least resemblance 
to any quality of which human beings have per¬ 
ception from their knowledge of material objects. 
. . . He has no relation to place, time, or measure. 
God is Mighty, because Power is His Essence, 
and Merciful, because Mercy is His Essence. 
The conditions of time and space are wholly in¬ 
applicable to Him." 

Such an absolutely omnipotent and purely 
spiritual conception of the godhead in all its 
grand and incommunicable oneness must of 

1 Sura xix. 91. 

2 The two principal names of God mentioned in the 
Koran are Rabb and Allah. In some thirty of the 
earlier suras the name Rabb alone is used. Later Allah 
becomes the predominant name and it remains so, 
though for a time Rahman is much used. Moslem 
theology has rightly determined that Allah alone stands 
for the Divine Essence, while the rest are names of mere 
Divine attributes. Allah is a contraction of A l Ilah — 
The Deity; the article emphasises His uniqueness. Ilah 
corresponds to the Old Testament Eloah, the root of 
which is El, from Ul = to be strong. Allah, therefore, 
signifies the Mighty One. 


32 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


necessity appear to certain types of men as cold 
and uncomforting, particularly to those who 
from their childhood have been brought up in 
the idea of God as a personal deity, as being 
almost a father, to whom all our concerns are 
objects of constant and immediate care. Per¬ 
sonification of the Eternal in any shape or form 
being thus utterly repugnant to Mohammed, it 
is not surprising that to the Christian commen¬ 
tators of Islam, the Allah of Mohammed should 
appear unapproachable and unsatisfying—a mere 
chilling abstraction of a vast, eternal, infinite 
nomad. Palgrave, for instance, commenting on 
the Islamic conception of Allah, says: 

“ Thus immeasurably and eternally exalted above 
and dissimilar from all creatures which lie levelled 
before Him on one common plane of instrumentality 
and inertness, God is one in the totality of omnipotent 
and omnipresent action, which acknowledges no rule, 
standard or limit, save His own sole and absolute will. 
He communicates nothing to His creatures; for their 
seeming power and act ever remain His alone, and in 
return He receives nothing from them; for whatever 
they may be, that they are in Him, by Him and from 
Him only. . . . One might at first sight think that 
this tremendous Autocrat, this uncontrolled and un¬ 
sympathising Power would be far above anything like 
passions, desires or inclinations. Yet such is not the 
case! ” 1 

That, indeed, is only too true! And this tirade 
of Palgrave’s only goes to prove that the Christian 
critic’s conception of Mohammed’s Allah is ob- 

1 Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and 
Eastern Arabia, Vol. I!, pp. 365-7. 


THE ALLAH OF MOHAMMED 


33 


viously faulty and unquestionably misleading. 
It is true that Mohammed’s Allah bears no re¬ 
semblance to any thing or being we know of nor 
does He have relationship, human or divine, 
with any thing or being we can think of; more, 
that Allah exists only in the pure region of the 
spirit which is above us, around us and within us. 
“No vision,’’ says the Koran, “taketh Him, but 
He taketh in all vision: and He is the Subtle, 
the All-informed.’’ 1 That such a purely spiritual 
and wholly impersonal conception of the Uni¬ 
versal Mind leaves no room, or ought to leave no 
room, for certain attributes, such as justice, 
mercy, truth, wisdom, love and compassion, that 
we generally associate with a personality, is 
equally true. “How would you then explain,” 
questions the reader, “Mohammed’s associating 
with such a purely impersonal Reality certain 
attributes which fall within human categories?” 
By the fact that to Mohammed, justice, truth, 
mercy, love were no mere human attributes— 
which are the outcome of environment and pre¬ 
vailing ideas and the sport of chance and personal 
idiosyncracies — but pure qualities which have 
their reality and perfect expression only in the 
Absolute, and of which in our phenomenal world 
we perceive, if we perceive at all, mere broken 
fragments and countless dim reflections. The 
Allah of Mohammed, consequently, is the All- 
mighty, All-knowing, All-penetrating, All-just, 
All-wise, All-merciful, and All-compassionate Lord 

1 Sura vi. 103. 

D 


34 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


of the worlds, the Author of the heavens and the 
earth, and the Creator of life and death, in whom 
are all things that be or ever shall be, and without 
whom no creature of any kind could hold existence 
for a moment. Saith the Koran: 

“Verily, Allah it is who cleaves out the grain and the 
date-stone: with Him are the keys of the secret things: 
none knoweth them but He: He knoweth whatever is 
in the land and in the sea: and no leaf falleth but He 
knoweth it: neither is there a grain in the darkness of 
the earth, nor a thing green or sere, but it is noted in 
His preserved tablet.” 1 

As is well-known, there are ninety-nine Asmas- 
sifdt or divine attributes of which the most 
prominent and the most frequently recurring are 
Ar-Rahman, the Merciful, and Ar-Rahim, the 
Compassionate. The mercy and compassion of 
the Eternal is one of the constantly-recurring 
themes, and in a sense, the most insistent note 
in the whole Koran. In fact, there is scarcely 
a chapter but opens in the name of the All- 
Merciful, the All-Compassionate, revealing that 
love, that divine mercy which enfolds all creation, 
and outside of which nothing created can survive 
an instant. And yet, curiously enough, there are 
critics who in their perfervid zeal for their own 
religion think nothing of calling the God of 
Mohammed “a pitiless tyrant,” “the tremendous 
Autocrat, uncontrolled and unsympathising,” and 
his omnipotence “ ruthless ” and his creed as 
being “divorced of love.” 

1 Sura vi. 59. 


THE ALLAH OF MOHAMMED 


35 


It may indeed be that it is a nobler conception 
of the Creator to represent Him as the very 
quintessence of Love, whose sole passion is one 
vast outpouring of Himself for the welfare and 
advancement of His creation and who sets no 
bound to His bounty save only those which our 
limitations create. I admit this Christian con¬ 
ception of the Deity comes nearer to our heart's 
desire, and consequently makes a strong appeal 
to certain types of mind. It certainly appeals 
to me. But when we descend from the clouds 
and face the stern logic of facts as we find 
around us, we are apt to look askance at the 
comfortable creed of the Christians. And then 
it is that we take shelter under Mohammed’s 
more virile idea of God as being one vast all- 
enfolding Reality, indefinable and inconceivable, 
which carries out its own supreme purpose not 
regardless of human weal or woe but with 
the full and the most minute and loving con¬ 
sideration of them all, as One Day we shall 
know and fully realise. 

In Islam, it is said, God's law is not the ex¬ 
pression of His moral nature but of His arbitrary 
will as evidenced by His oft-repeated phrase— 
‘‘Allah misleadeth whom He will and whom He 
will He guideth." It is, moreover, contended 
that, if His words can be abrogated, as they have 
been in twenty instances, His commandments 
are subject to change, improvement and favour¬ 
itism, and consequently, can have no absolute 
or permanent value of their own. I know the 


36 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


question of ”abrogated verses” is a difficult one 
and still remains one of the unsolved prob¬ 
lems of Islamism. But the other question of 
Allah’s law being the outcome of His moral nature 
and arbitrary will is absurd in itself. To such 
absurdity we are reduced when we try to pen in 
the Infinite within the attenuated fold of human 
categories and to judge divine acts from limited 
human outlook of things and by purely arbitrary 
and ever-shifting human standards. 

“God is not a larger man, viewing life from man’s 
restricted standpoint and subject to the same limitations 
of feeling and action. He is the life of all that is, the 
infinitely complex Reality that is finding manifestation 
in the world of worlds, present in every grain of dust 
as in the farthest star. He cannot, therefore, be con¬ 
ditioned as we are, and His ways of behaving must be 
to a large extent incomprehensible to us. Even the 
terms ‘He,’ ‘His,’ and ‘Him,’ as applied to deity are 
apt to become somewhat misleading. They at once 
call up the idea of a person of the male sex, like our-,; 
selves but greater, wiser, better perhaps. Let us gettef 
that out of our heads. God is neither male nor female % 
and none of the other human qualities that depend"* 
upon earthly relationships can be exactly predicated 
of Him.” 

The reader will naturally suppose that the 
above quotation was from an Islamic source and 
was an Islamic conception of Allah. It is neither. 

It comes from a Christian source and is a cele¬ 
brated Christian preacher’s conception of the 
Eternal. It is, in fact, R. J. Campbell’s concep¬ 
tion of his Creator. 1 It is, therefore, possible for 
1 The War and the Soul , pp. 70-72. 


THE ALLAH OF MOHAMMED 


37 


the most assiduous minister of Christ to get on 
common ground with the most bigoted maulana 
of Mohammed in their fundamental ideas of their 
Creator. At all events, there is no gainsaying 
the fact that Mohammed’s concept of Allah, in 
all its simple and incommunicable Oneness was 
infinitely exalted above the vain conceits men 
have hitherto formed concerning their Creator, 
and is such that, speaking personally, whenever 
I have thought on it, I have felt— 

“A Presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 

And the round ocean and the living air, 

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 

A motion and a Spirit, that impels 

All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 

And rolls through all things.” 






THE ISLAM OF MOHAMMED 


“The Islam of Mohammed proclaimed a new faith, and 
yet a faith in which nothing was new." 


J 


E. V. Arnold. 


CHAPTER III 


THE ISLAM OF MOHAMMED 

That absolute omnipotence which Mohammed 
claimed for the Creator, necessarily connoted an 
equally absolute dependence of His Creation on 
Him. There is no getting away from the plain 
logic of this conclusion. And the Prophet never 
did. On the contrary, in sura after sura, either 
directly or indirectly, he taught that Allah is the 
supreme judge and the sole arbiter of the pur¬ 
pose and destiny of his entire creation, human 
or otherwise. Witness the following: “By no 
means can aught befall us save what God hath 
destined” 1 : again, “No leaf falleth but He 
knoweth it; neither is there a grain in the 
darkness of the earth, nor a thing green or sere, 
but it is marked down on the preserved tablet.” 2 
Then there is what is called the “proof-text” in 
sura lxxvi, 29-30: “This truly is a warning, and 
whoso willeth, taketh the way to his Lord; but 
will it ye shall not, unless Allah will it, for Allah 
is Knowing, Wise!” And, to cap all, there is 
the famous saying which is repeated at least in 
a dozen texts of the Koran: “Allah misleadeth 
whom He will and whom He will He guideth.” 
In fact, Islam, that great word of power and 

1 Sura ix. 51. 2 Sura vi. 59. 


4i 


42 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


magic, by which Mohammed’s religion is known 
all over the world, at once emblemises and 
idealises this total dependence of the created on 
the Creator. For Islam is primarily derived from 
the Arabic word salm or salama, which literally 
means to be absolutely tranquil, to feel perfectly 
safe; and by implication, to be at perfect peace 
with oneself and the rest of the world having 
done one’s duty and paid up one’s dues. And 
the whole word, Islam, being evidently a con¬ 
traction of Allah-salam, consequently means to 
be absolutely tranquil and feel perfectly safe 
in Allah, that is, to be at perfect peace with 
oneself and the rest of the world, having wholly 
and freely consigned oneself to the will and 
judgment of Allah. A 1 Islam, therefore, is a 
creed which enjoins that its followers shall of 
their own reasoned belief and conviction leave 
the issue of each and every incident of their life 
entirely and unquestioningly in the hands of 
their Creator. And those who freely subscribe to 
this creed and faithfully follow it through all the 
vicissitudes of their lives are, according to sura ii., 
122, 125, 12 y and 130, true Muslims. 

From the above it is evident that the funda¬ 
mental idea which lies at the core of Islam is 
this absolute submission of one’s self and of all 
that one holds dear in life to One Who enfolds 
all things that be, and without Whom no creature 
ever existed, nor ever will. Towards this simple 
and sublime creed at one time or another of the 
world’s history the leading minds of humanity 


THE ISLAM OF MOHAMMED 


43 


have always felt drawn. Have not, for instance, 
men of science like Newton and Galileo, philo¬ 
sophers like Socrates and Bacon, conquerors like 
Caesar and Napoleon, saints like Augustine and 
Aquinas, poets like Homer and Goethe in one 
way or another subscribed to it? And has not 
Christ himself proclaimed Islam when in the 
agony of that awful night at Gethsemane he 
fell on his face and prayed, “O my Father, if 
it be possible, let this cup pass from me: never¬ 
theless not as I will, but as Thou wilt”? This— 
“Not as I will, but as Thou wilt”—was not only 
the grand historic prefigurement of Islam but a 
prophetic anticipation of the greatest thing Islam 
had to teach to those whom she summoned to 
her service. Well might Goethe exclaim, “If 
this be Islam, do we not all live in Islam!” and 
Carlyle take up the cry and affirm: 

“ I say this is the only true morality known. A man 
is right and invincible, virtuous and on the road towards 
sure conquest, precisely while he joins himself to the 
great Law of the World, in spite of all superficial laws, 
temporary appearances, profit-and-loss calculations. And 
his first chance of co-operating with it, or getting into 
the course of it, is to know with his whole soul that it 
is; that it is good, and alone good! This is the soul of 
Islam; and it is properly the soul of Christianity.” 1 

And yet this cardinal article of Mohammed’s 
faith, which Christ in the travail of his soul pre¬ 
figured and to which some of the greatest minds 
of Christendom have repeatedly subscribed, 

1 On Heroes and Hero-Worship, Lecture II. 


44 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


in so many words or by way of implica¬ 
tion, as .“the only true morality known,” is 
held up to open ridicule and subjected to 
systematic denunciation by the modern critics 
of Islam. Witness the following from Sir 
William Muir’s Selections : 

“ In Islam the relation of Allah to the world is such 
that not only all free-will but all freedom in the exercise 
of the intellect is preposterous. God is so great and the 
character of His greatness is so pantheistically absolute 
that there is no room for the human. All good and all 
evil come directly from Allah. . . . Hope perishes under 
the weight of His iron bondage and pessimism becomes 
the popular philosophy.” 1 

Clarke goes one better and remarks: 

Islam saw God but not man; saw the claims of 
Deity, but not the rights of humanity; saw authority 
but failed to see freedom—therefore hardened into des¬ 
potism, stiffened into formalism, and sank into death.” 2 

Palgrave goes still one better and observes: 

“No superiority, no distinction, no pre-eminence can 
be lawfully claimed in Islam by one creature over 
another in the utter equalisation of their unexceptional 
servitude and abasement. All are alike tools of the 
one solitary Force, which employs them to crush or to 
benefit, to truth or to error, to honour or shame, to happi¬ 
ness or misery, quite independently of their individual 
fitness, deserts or advantage—and simply because He 
wills it and as He wills it.” 3 

1 Selections from the Coran, p. 52. 

2 Ten Great Religions, Vol. II. p. 68. 

3 Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and 
Eastern Arabia, Vol. I. p. 366. 


THE ISLAM OF MOHAMMED 


45 


This obvious misrepresentation, or rather the 
indolent misinterpretation of Islam by Muir, 
Clarke, and Palgrave, one can easily understand 
and readily forgive as being the outcome of either 
their limited outlook on life or their great zeal 
for their own religion. But what are we to think 
of expounders from among the ranks of the 
Faithful themselves, who, to placate the critics, 
are tempted to compromise with them on this, 
the most vital point of their faith? Take, for 
instance, that eminent jurist and brilliant ex¬ 
ponent of Islamism, the Rt. Hon. Syed Ameer 
Ali. “In order to form a just appreciation of 
the religion of Mohammed/' remarks the learned 
judge, “it is necessary to understand aright the 
true significance of the word Islam” No propo¬ 
sition could be truer, none more worthy of 
immediate acceptance! “Salm (salama in the 
first and fourth conjugations) means, in the first 
instance," continues the judge, “to be tranquil, 
at rest, to have done one’s duty, to have paid 
up, to be at perfect peace, and, finally, to surrender 
oneself to Him with whom peace is made." A 
reader would be justified in inferring from the 
above that Mr. Ameer Ali meant by “surren¬ 
dering oneself to Him with whom peace is made" 
as a full, glad, and wholehearted surrender of 
one’s own self and all one’s affairs to Him of 
Whom one had sought one’s peace and one’s 
salvation. Imagine, therefore, the reader’s sur¬ 
prise when he is told immediately afterwards 
that “ The word (Islam) does not imply, as 


46 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

is commonly supposed, absolute submission to 
God’s will, but means, on the contrary, striving 
after righteousness.” 1 

What are we to make of this open tergiver¬ 
sation, of this light-hearted word-juggling ? The 
plain, blunt modern inquirers who are very defi¬ 
nitely set upon a thorough analysis of the nature 
and growth of the Islamic creeds and ideas can 
have no patience with such timid shifting and 
undignified shuffling. With brutal bluntness they 
are apt to ask: “What is ‘absolute’ and what 
is ‘non-absolute’ submission to God’s will? ” Can 
there be any question of half-and-half in the 
intimate and sacred relations between God and 
Man? In this spiritual relationship, can there 
be any base bargaining, any miserable disputings 
about more submission or less submission to 
God’s will? In other words, can we chop up 
our will and then haggle with God and say— 
‘‘This much of our will shall be ours and that 
much of our will shall be Thine, do Thou agree ” ? 
If we wish to trust in Him and surrender our 
will and ourselves to Him, we must do it with 
a full heart, keeping back nothing and forming 
no reservations, mental or material. This is the 
one sure lesson Islam has to teach the world. 
This, at all events, is the Spirit of Islam. 

‘‘If this be the spiiit of Islam, is it not a 
spirit full of danger?” questions the reader. 
‘‘Have not certain weak-willed Moslems found 


1 The Spirit of Islam, pp. 225, 226. 


47 


THE ISLAM OF MOHAMMED 

V 

in those fatal sayings, Allah-keyeen 1 and Allah- 
katib 2 an easy covering for many a wrong they 
have done to their fellow-men? And is not 
bukra-inshallah 3 the secret cause of the present 
stagnation of the Mussulman communities all 
over the world? 

I admit the force of the above argument. I 
quite realise that such a creed if carried un- 
intelligently to its logical sequence would kill all 
effort and ambition and eventually wear away 
the morale of a people. On the other hand, it 
must be remembered, that, like truth, every creed 
has its attendant dangers, and there is not a 
creed or a truth that cannot be abused in a like 
manner. And so it is that this great Islamic 
creed is not without its attendant dangers, nor 
can it lay claim, any more than any other of its 
sister creeds, to any special immunity from being 
abused. Besides, let us not forget the old adage: 
"The Devil can cite scripture for his uses,” so 
also can a weak wayward creature, no matter 
what creed it professed, do when it suits its 
purpose. This strange, inexplicable antinomy, 
which lies at the root of all great truths and 
creeds, is what makes their indiscriminate dis¬ 
semination so dangerous at times. Constituted 
as we are, such dangers and difficulties are un¬ 
avoidable and have to be met and overcome as 
best we can. For one thing we would not improve 
matters by trying to run away from them. So 

1 It is the will of God. 2 God decreed it. 

3 To-morrow, if God wills it. 


48 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


it is no use arguing that "the word Islam does 
not imply ” what it does imply, and wholly implies, 
and implies nothing if not that—namely, absolute 
submission to God’s will. Nothing ruins a cause 
so much as any hesitancy displayed by its leading 
minds to stand by the logical outcome of their 
own beliefs and convictions. Let the Moslems, 
therefore, remember that nothing is more calcu¬ 
lated to betray A 1 Islam in the eyes of those 
outside its fold than such unworthy quibbling 
on the part of its foremost exponents and recog¬ 
nised authorities. Possessing no settled convic¬ 
tions on this fundamental belief of their religion, 
they naturally dare not stand by its logical 
sequence and so must necessarily explain it away 
in a half-assertive, half-apologetic manner: and 
what is worse, not wholly believing, all the while, 
even in their own explanations. 

The wiser course, therefore, is to accept the 
facts as they stand and face them as best we can. 
And what are the facts? That Islam has always 
implied and will ever continue to imply in the 
first resort and last—absolute submission to God’s 
will: in other words, the complete and spon¬ 
taneous merging of the individual human will 
into the all-enfolding Divine will. Saith the 
Prophet: 

“Verily, the true religion in the sight of God is Islam. 
... If any dispute with thee, then say: I have resigned 
myself unto God, and he who followeth me doth the 
same.” 1 

1 Sura iii. 17-18. 


THE ISLAM OF MOHAMMED 


49 


This is the true implication of Islam; nothing 
more and nothing less. As, on the one hand, we 
must boldly take our stand by the full contents 
of this implication, so also, on the other hand, 
must we studiously avoid all temptations of 
reading more into it than what it plainly lays 
claim to, and strenuously resist all attempts at 
importing extraneous matters into it by inter¬ 
ested outsiders. For instance, Islam, kept within 
its strict bounds, does not uphold jabr 1 or blind, 
unresisting fatalism any more than it denounces 
tafwiz or free-will and absolute liberty, though 
in itself it is the natural and logical outcome of a 
belief in determinism or predestinarianism. The 
Koran proclaims and repeatedly proclaims that 
the Future is fixed and determinate, settled and 
inevitable—just as fixed and determinate, settled 
and inevitable as the Past. That, in fact, the 
Future is duly mapped out and permanently 
engraved on certain tablets in heaven called 
" Preserved Tables.” This being the case, the 
path of wisdom for a rational creature lies along 
accepting without vain sorrows and idle wishes 
whatever befalls it as coming straight from its 
Creator above. Whoever, therefore, approaches 
the ever-evolving mysterious scheme of things in 
this chastened mood of glad acceptance, and in 
that mood yields instant and unquestioning 
obedience to the will of the great unknown 
Organiser of the scheme, professes Islam in all 
truth and reality even though he may never 

1 Literally, it means compulsion. 

E 


50 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


have known Islam nor ever heard of its name. 
When, however, a man formally professes his 
belief in this basic article of Mohammed’s religion 
and then seeks the way of salvation ( Najat) by 
pledging himself to accept the six articles of faith 
{Iman) and carry out the injunctions {Shan ah) 
and practices {Din) enjoined by the Prophet in 
the Koran, he becomes a Moslem. And he remains 
a good Moslem and a worthy exponent of Islam 
so long as this surrender of his own will and 
judgment to the Supreme will and judgment is 
active, spontaneous and entire, and is backed by 
a sincere and steadfast resolution to keep to the 
way of salvation by holding fast to the articles 
of faith, and faithfully carrying out the religious 
practices and injunctions laid down by the 
Prophet. If, on the other hand, his submission 
to God’s will and judgment is a mere weak and 
despairing acquiescence wrung out of him through 
abject fear and indolent helplessness, his taking 
to the way of salvation and his acceptance of 
the articles of faith a mere otiose, soulless con¬ 
formity, and his carrying out of religious in¬ 
junctions and practices a matter of dull, dead, 
mechanical routine, then obviously he is a bad 
Moslem and an unworthy exponent of Islam. It 
is the Moslem of this latter type who constantly 
bemoans his kismet and has bukra-inshallah ever 
on the tip of his tongue! And it is from the con¬ 
tents of mind and the conduct of life of such 
Moslems that the Christian critics have developed 
their theory that Islam is the leading exponent 


THE ISLAM OF MOHAMMED 


5i 

and active propounder of the creed of Fatalism 
in the world. 

If it were so, it is obvious that nowhere would 
we, or ought we to find a better exemplification 
of this creed of fatalism than in the life and 
activities of one who originated and propounded 
it—namely, of Mohammed himself. Yet, what 
do we find in the recorded events of Mohammed’s 
life? A buoyant childhood; an active boyhood; 
an enterprising period of youth, during which 
he took part in two commercial ventures neces¬ 
sitating long, wearisome journeys of months 
through the dreary, scorching deserts; a rest¬ 
less manhood given wholly to thinking out the 
deepest problems of life and destiny, involving 
an endless travail of the soul; and a protracted 
middle-age which commenced in comparative 
calm and ended in perhaps the most strenuous 
period of his life, made up of battles, sieges and 
expeditions. Such a long and vigorous career, 
crossed and recrossed by the varied moods and 
tricks of fortune, does not not look like one 
given to mere passive acceptance of things as 
they are or to sheer indolent acquiescence in 
events as they happen, which Fatalism, rightly 
so called, presupposes and enforces. Rather it 
has the appearance of a career which believes 
in actively and courageously working out its 
destiny regardless of opposing forces and trust¬ 
ing solely and remaining absolutely resigned to 
the inscrutable will of God. 

It was this spirit that carried the Prophet’s 


52 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

arms to victory at the battle of Badr and saved 
them on the disastrous field of Ohud, and it 
was the same spirit of courage and determination 
which helped to dig the trenches round Medinah 
when closely besieged, and which finally stood 
by him at the taking of Mecca. Were he, on the 
contrary, led by the spirit of fatalism, he would 
have sat with folded hands at Badr, leaving to 
Allah and his followers to fight out his battles, 
and when the disaster of Ohud overtook him 
there would have been idle regrets and much 
heart-searching. Instead, on that fatal day he, 
though wounded and bleeding, was as calm and 
composed as ever. No vain sorrows and wishes 
took possession of him, and he took it all as one 
who knows that “we know nothing/’ that the 
worst disaster and cruellest happening are not 
what they seem to our eyes, and that those 
pledged to Islam have to receive whatsoever 
befalls them as part of God’s training and say: 

“ Nothing can befall us except what God has destined 
for us: and God is Knowing, Wise. Therefore, it is good 
and wise, and on God let the Faithful trust!” 

This is the Islam of Mohammed, pure and un¬ 
alloyed! This is yet in its way, as Carlyle puts 
it, “the highest wisdom that Heaven has re¬ 
vealed to our Earth.’’ 1 What is there in it to 
merit the sweeping condemnation of Muir, Clarke 
and Palgrave, or lead to the grossly unfair de- 


1 On Heroes and Hero-Worship, Lecture II. 


THE ISLAM OF MOHAMMED 


53 

ductions of Forster, Swemer and Koelle? Says 
the last-named: 

“ Now, as the saying is true, that the nature of a tree 
becomes known from the fruit it bears, so also we may 
be prepared, by what has hitherto passed in review 
before our eyes, to admit that the untold miseries and 
woes which the politico-religious amalgam of Islamism 
has, age after age, inflicted on mankind, as the pages 
of history testify, are really the outward and tangible 
manifestation of its true inward nature. As such, they 
revert, in due proportion, to the prophet and author 
of the system, their indirect cause, and brand them both 
with the stigma of well-merited reprobation.” 1 

Who that has read Hallam’s Middle Ages will 
deny that the Church of Christ during those ages 
“shed more innocent blood than any other insti¬ 
tution that has ever existed among mankind"? 
Would we, therefore, be justified in holding Christ 
responsible for the gross misuse of his name and 
system by his unregenerate followers, and in 
“branding them both with the stigma of well- 
merited reprobation"? Such a line of argument, 
it is evident, is neither fair nor logical. The 
Prophet and the products of his brain and spirit 
must be judged on their own merits and not by 
the use or misuse made of them by some external 
agency in his own or subsequent age. Judged 
from this standard, the Islam of Mohammed will 
stand the test as well as any other religion, 
and in some of the intricate problems of exis¬ 
tence better than most I know of. For instance, 
is it really true that the primary object of life is 
1 Mohammed and Mohammedanism , p. 241, 


54 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

to learn the one great lesson of— trust in God ? 
To this momentous question Islam seems to 
furnish a living affirmation. Again, is it really 
possible, here and now, in this mundane life of 
ours to live with Him above the clouds of doubt 
and care? To this again Islam gives the same 
emphatic answer. Is it then the true function 
of evolution, as it is of religion, to teach us 
to breathe the rare atmosphere of these serene 
altitudes? To this, finally, Islam responds in 
the same decided tone as before. If, then, the 
purpose of our earthly pilgrimage is to learn the 
great lesson of trust in God and the secret of 
evolution as of religion is to teach us to live with 
Him above the clouds of doubt and care, how is 
that lesson of life to be learnt and this secret of 
evolution to be charmed out of existence? By 
whatever method others may secure for them¬ 
selves this summum bonum of life and evolution, 
for the devout Moslem there has always been, 
and there ever will be, one method, and only one, 
and that is, by seeking the Way of Salvation 
(najdt) by holding fast to the I man of his Prophet, 
carrying out scrupulously his Din and obeying 
faithfully his Shariat. 


THE NAJAT OF MOHAMMED 


“And a man of the family of Pharaoh, who was a Believer, 
but hid his faith, said, ‘ O my people! follow me, into the 
right way will I guide you: this present life is only a passing 
joy, but the life to come is the mansion that abideth. How 
is it, my people, that I bid you to najat (salvation), but 
that ye bid me to the fire?" 


Sura xl. 41 , 42 , 44 . 


CHAPTER IV 


THE NAJAT OF MOHAMMED 

According to the Islamic theory of Creation, 
Man was created to serve wholly and solely his 
Creator and carry out His will alone. Every 
man is originally good and sinless, but being 
born weak, his soul is liable to be influenced by 
sin and evil. These latter entered the world 
solely through the instrumentality of Iblis or 
Shaitan. Mohammed derived the idea of the last- 
named from the Satan of the later Judaism, an 
idea which the Jews themselves had inherited 
from the Persians during their Babylonian Cap¬ 
tivity; for Satan is none other than the Ahriman 
of the later Avestas. Mohammed’s conception 
of the Evil One, however, differed fundamentally 
from its two progenitors, inasmuch as these last, 
though they did not hold conjointly with God 
equal sovereignty over the world, were yet repre¬ 
sented as if they w r ere independent of Him and 
did very much as they liked with those who 
fell under their sway. The Iblis of Mohammed 
was, on the other hand, only one of the Jinns or 
demons, often spoken of as an angel who, it was 
said, was cast down from Paradise because he 
would not worship Adam. The point, therefore, 
that needs to be particularly emphasised about 

57 


58 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

Mohammed’s Iblis is that he is as much a creation 
of Allah as any other of His creations, and as 
such comes fully and immediately within the 
ambit of Divine omnipotence. If in revenge 
of his own downfall, Iblis tempts Allah’s other 
creatures and causes them to fall, he no doubt 
does so under the belief that he thereby thwarts 
and upsets the Divine plans, whereas in reality 
he is a mere tool in the hands of Allah performing 
his appointed task in the ultimate furtherance of 
the Divine purpose. In other words, in the 
Islamic theory of Creation Iblis was very much 
like what Mephistopheles was in the Mediaeval 
legends: 


A part of that great might 


That ever wills the wrong, but makes the right.” 

This Islamic conception of Evil and the neces¬ 
sary part it plays in the grand drama of humanity, 
the reader will have to grasp fully if he wishes 
to understand that famous verse which is re¬ 
peated at least twenty times in the Koran and 
which has called forth the Christian critic’s 
severest strictures and roused his worst feelings 
against Mohammed and his conception of Allah. 
As the reader will have guessed, the verse is: 



“ Allah misleadeth whom He will, 
And whom He will He guideth.’ 


Or take the other two verses not so often quoted, 
but equally clear and precise on the point at issue: 

“When the infidels plotted against thee to keep thee 
prisoner, or kill thee, or banish thee;—they plotted, 


59 


THE NAJAT OF MOHAMMED 

ye think? Not they, but Allah plotted: and of all 
plotters Allah is the best.” 1 

“This truly is a warning; and whoso willeth taketh 
the way of the Lord; but will it ye shall not unless 
Allah will it, for Allah is Knowing, Wise!” 2 

We do not much wonder that the critics have 
been unsparingly severe in their criticism of these 
verses. For the verses, when wrenched out of 
their context and made to stand bold and staring 
as above, present a rather ungainly appearance. 
And what is worse, the Moslem expounders 
themselves make no effort whatever to explain 
their strict logical bearing and necessity in the 
Islamic theory of an all-comprehending omni¬ 
potent Divinity with the Evil Spirit as an in¬ 
dispensable instrument in His hands for the 
furtherance and ultimate fulfilment of the grand 
Scheme of Existence. 

Such, then, is the theory of creation in Islam, 
with Shaitan active and full of temptations, 
and Man, though not of an evil nature, being 
born weak and very temptable, prone to evil 
and so falling an easy victim to the blandishments 
and sophistries of the Evil One. Having once 
fallen he neglects his duties, ceases to fear God, 
and becomes capricious, covetous, proud and 
generally sinful and impious. In consequence, 
he is temporarily estranged from God. The 
sinner being thus only temporarily and not per¬ 
manently estranged from God, there is a chance 
of his becoming reconciled again with his Creator. 
And the chance lies along the way of Najat or 
1 Sura viii. 30. 2 Sura lxxvi. 29-30. 


6 o THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


salvation, and the way itself lies through the 
three-fold path of Sincere Repentance, Implicit 
Faith and Good Works. Saith the Prophet: 
“Save those who Repent, Believe and Act Aright, 
none shall enter Paradise.” 1 

In the Koran repentance primarily signifies a 
free and full confession of the offence and then 
a definite turning away from it to turn to Allah, 
with a view to secure His pardon and help in the 
future amendment of life. The Islamic theory 
of Repentance, consequently, is not materially 
different from the Christian. In fact, the whole 
Islamic conception of Salvation, through repen¬ 
tance, faith and good works, bears a strong 
general resemblance to the Christian. There is 
yet an important basic difference. The Christian 
conception is based more or less on the doctrine 
of Original Sin and the depravity of unregenerate 
human nature, while the Islamic does not admit 
of any original depravity in man, since the idea 
of sin in the Koran does not imply any original 
taint of nature but only a proneness to wrong¬ 
doing due to the innate weakness of man. Con¬ 
sequently, the Islamic conception of Salvation 
does not include the element of Regeneration in 
the sense in which the Christian conception does; 
and so in effect the Najat or Salvation of Moham¬ 
med consists in the deliverance of the faithful 
from the wages of sin by unquestioning sub¬ 
mission to Allah and His wishes as declared in 
* 

His Revelation. 

1 Sura xix. 61. 


THE IMAN OF MOHAMMED 


“If the Iman of Mohammed, which has fixed certain 
matters of life once for all, was delivered to the people by 
the right type of preachers, it would vivify the body, purify 
the thought, fortify the faith, and raise the morale of the 
mass of the Faithful.” 


Mustapha Kemal Pasha. 


CHAPTER V 


THE IMAN OF MOHAMMED 

To secure salvation, as explained in the foregoing 
chapter, the sinner, according to the teachings of 
the Prophet, needed—besides sincere and spon¬ 
taneous Repentance—implicit Faith [Iman) and 
Good Works (Din). The word Imdn, or faith, in 
the Islamic scriptures has a wide connotation, 
and includes not only what we ordinarily mean 
by it but the whole creed of Islam on its specu¬ 
lative side as opposed to its practical embodied 
in Din and Shariat. As such it is composed 
of six articles of Faith which may briefly be 
summarised under the following six heads: 

1. God. 

2. Angels. 

3. Scriptures. 

4. Prophets. 

5. Judgment. 

6. Decrees. 

1. God. 

As we saw in Chapter II., the principal teaching 
of Mohammed and the great doctrine of the 
Koran was the perfect unity and absolute 

63 


64 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


indivisibility of the Deity. It was, he said, the 
one fundamental truth at the base of every true 
religion. For, though other tenets of faith and 
rules of practice may vary according to the needs 
of time and circumstance, this fact of the unity 
and indivisibility of the Deity being an eternal 
verity is not subject to change but must continue 
so immutably to the end of time. However, this 
immutable article of faith followed the ways of 
all things earthly, and so in the case of every 
previous religion had been either neglected or 
corrupted. Consequently, in each case God had 
sent down a prophet to warn mankind, wean 
them from their erring ways and rehabilitate 
them once again in that ancient belief which 
was the one and only true conception of Himself. 
Mohammed was the last of this race of prophets 
and was, as he himself proclaimed it, “the sign 
and seal of them all.” The Koran most emphati¬ 
cally and insistently calls all the Faithful to 
hearken unto this last of the apostles of Allah, 
and narrates what dreadful punishments in ancient 
days followed those who either rejected or abused 
His former messengers. 

“ Praise ye, therefore, the name of thy Lord, 

The Most High! 

Say: He is God, one and alone: 

God the Eternal: 

He begetteth not, and He is not begotten; 

And there is none like unto Him!" 

2. Angels. 

The belief in the existence and ministry of 


THE IMAN OF MOHAMMED 


65 


Angels and the tradition which places the doc¬ 
trine concerning them immediately after that 
of God are quite in keeping with the Koranic 
teaching. The whole doctrine of the Angels 
Mohammed derived directly from the Jews, as 
their names and offices make it only too evident. 
The Jews were similarly indebted to the Persians; 
consequently, the Islamic angels are the lineal 
descendants of the Persian. 

The ancient Persians believed in the ministry of 
angels and their superintendence over the affairs 
of mankind; therefore, they assigned them dis¬ 
tinct charges and provinces, even going to the 
length of calling the months and the days of 
the months after their names—a practice which 
the Parsis have kept up to this day. Likewise, the 
angels in Islam are the intermediaries of Allah 
for guarding and helping the true Believers, 
especially when they are summoned to fight in 
defence of their faith. The angels, being also 
the recorders of the deeds of men, receive their 
souls on the other side of the grave, and on the 
Day of Judgment intercede on behalf of the true 
believers before the throne of the Highest. It 
is they who support the throne of Allah night 
and day, and worship Him unceasingly, and at 
His command prostrate themselves before Adam. 
One of them, Iblis, refused to obey this command 
of God, for which act of disobedience he was cast 
down from Paradise. 1 Iblis, as we saw, is the 
Evil Spirit of the Koran. He is also mentioned 

1 Sura ii. 32. 

F 


66 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


in the Koran under the Hebrew derivative 
—Shaitan. The epithet rajim, or accursed, is 
then generally used with the name Shaitan, and 
at times the other epithet marid, or rebellious, 
is also employed. He is often spoken of as the 
leader of the host of devils, who are not easily 
distinguishable from the host of jinns or demons. 1 
The Jinns or genii are created of subtle fire and, 
generally speaking, come midway between men 
and angels. There are both good and evil Jinns. 
The latter are the spirits that lead men away 
from the path of duty towards God. In fact, 
the gods which the infidels worship and strive 
all their lives to keep in countenance and good 
humour are these evil Jinns. Saith the Prophet: 

“We will appoint satans as their boon companions; 
for it was they who made their present and future state 
seem fair and right to them; and the sentence passed 
on the peoples of Djinn and men who flourished before 
them hath become their due, and they shall perish.” 2 

3. Scriptures. 

As in the several Scriptures mentioned in the 
Koran i lies the ' core of Islamic * conception of 
Revelation, it is necessary in the first place to 
consider what the word “ scripture ” means in 
the Koran. As is well known, the leading word 
for scripture is kitab, which means literally “what 
is written.” That is the word used for all Scrip¬ 
tures in general, but most frequently it is applied 
to the Koran itself. However, the distinguishing 

1 Sura xviii. 48. 2 Sura xli. 24. 


THE IMAN OF MOHAMMED 67 

doctrine of Mohammed in this matter is that 
Allah has in His possession a unique book called 
Ummu’l Kitab , which means Mother of the 
Book. Each successive revelation which the 
world has received was taken from this arche¬ 
typal book and sent down to mankind in charge 
of a special envoy of God. Every preceding 
Scripture is, therefore, a partial revelation or 
unveiling of the divine mysteries of heaven and 
earth. It is literally Kalamu’illdh, or the Word 
of God. Though the Koran itself being the con¬ 
firmation and safeguard of the previous Scrip¬ 
tures is in a special sense “the Word of God,” 
yet all the Scriptures mentioned in the Koran 
can likewise lay claim to that high origin. How¬ 
ever, by the revealed Scriptures spoken of in the 
Koran, it is the Old and New Testaments that 
are most frequently meant. In this connection 
one of the standing accusations which the critics 
advance against the Prophet is that he quoted 
Scriptures without taking care to verify his 
quotations. “It remains one of the outstanding 
anomalies of history/’ remarks Stanton, “that 
the religious genius of Arabia, who staked the 
truth of his message on the witness of previous 
Scriptures, should have utterly neglected to verify 
their contents and should have successfully in¬ 
spired his followers through the ages to a like 
neglect.’’ 1 Though this is a fact and a very 
regrettable fact, yet in the circumstances in 
which the Prophet was placed it could not have 
1 The Teaching of the Qur'an, p. 42. 


68 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


been otherwise. Being “unlettered” himself, he 
had of necessity to depend on what he received 
by word of mouth, and whenever an occasion 
arose for its use he had only his memory to fall 
back upon. So we know to what the scriptural 
misquotations in the Koran owed their origin 
and how inevitable they were. It is true that 
their inclusion in the text of the Koran seriously 
prejudices its claim to being “absolutely free 
from error,” still there is no reason whatever to 
assume that the Prophet deliberately garbled 
texts to meet his ends. 

According to Moslem tradition, in a class by 
itself, above all the other Revealed Scriptures 
of the world, stands—as the flower and crown 
of them all—the Koran. On no other point do 
the detractors and upholders of Islam differ so 
radically as on the question of the merits and 
demerits of that “ book eternal.” The Koran, 
in fact, is a puzzle book. From one point of 
view it is a book of rare beauties crammed with 
noble preachings addressed to all mankind, at 
once evoking its better mind and confirming its 
strivings and yearnings for the true, the good, 
and the pure. Ever and anon in that book of 
books occur passages of burning eloquence, per- 
fervid with religious zeal, describing the wonderful 
Mercy, Power and Unity of Allah. And yet, 
alas, it must be admitted that it is also a book 
which at time launches out into open contradic¬ 
tions and slithers into inexcusable incoherences, 
often ending in mere repetitions and rhapsodical 


THE IMAN OF MOHAMMED 69 

redundancies. The truth of the matter is that 
the Koran as we now possess it is not, nor could 
it have been, a perfectly accurate and unim¬ 
peachable record of the revelations as the Prophet 
actually delivered them to his disciples by word 
of mouth. The revelations contained in it were 
given, as the Moslem chroniclers themselves admit, 
at various times, in various places, and before vari¬ 
ous persons. At times they were taken down by 
his secretaries or disciples on parchment, on palm- 
leaves, or on the shoulder-blades of sheep, and 
thrown together in a chest, of which one of the 
Prophet’s wives had charge; but most frequently 
they were merely treasured up in the memories 
of those who heard them. No care appears to 
have been taken to systematise and arrange this 
heterogeneous material during the Prophet’s life¬ 
time, and at his death they remained in scattered 
fragments, many of them at the mercy of falla¬ 
cious memories, until Abu Bakr undertook to 
have them gathered together and methodically 
transcribed. It is, therefore, only natural to 
suppose that “the Kitab Incomparable" must 
necessarily have been subjected to unavoidable 
corruptions and interested interpolations. 

With all its limitations, the Koran is held in 
the greatest possible veneration by the Moslems 
all over the world. The simple grandeur of its 
diction and the chaste elegance of its style are 
to them proofs positive of the fact that it is 
a Revelation, pure and unadulterated, derived 
straight from the great Fountain-Head of all 


70 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

Revelations. 1 Its meaning may be variously 
interpreted, but its authority is unquestioned in 
all matters secular or spiritual, and its judgment 
final whether in Church or State. Consequently, 
in spite of all its incoherences and contradictions, 
if we consider the Koran as the work of one 
man, and that an unlettered man, it remains, as 
Washington Irving rightly puts it, “a stupendous 
monument of solitary legislation.” 2 


4. Prophets. 

As we saw before, each divine revelation vouch¬ 
safed to man since Adam, was according to 
Mohammed sent down in charge of a special 
envoy of God called Rasul or Nabi. Both these 
terms are indifferently applied in the Koran, 
except that in sura xlviii, 29, which is embodied 
in the great Kalimet, the term Rasul is used. 
The first of these rasuls was Adam, as Mohammed 
was the last and “the Seal of the Prophets.” In 
all twenty-seven prophets are mentioned in the 

1 “ The Koran is unique in literature, the most original 
book in the world. Nor can we, as Muslims, for a moment 
accept the man Muhammad as its author in the ordinary 
sense. . . . Even when I try to view it from the critic’s 
standpoint, it seems to me as if some Power outside 
Muhammad had taken the Prophet’s life and mission, 
his surroundings and the learning of the time to give 
an earthly form and colour to a message in itself un¬ 
earthly, and make it understood by mortal men.”— 
Marmaduke Pickthall. 

2 Life of Mahomet, Appendix. 


THE IMAN OF MOHAMMED 


7i 


Koran, of these twenty-two belong to the Old 1 
and three to the New Testament, 2 and two 
others 3 to no scripture whatever. It was during 
the critical period of Mohammed’s struggle against 
the powerful idolaters of Mecca that the life- 
stories of these prophets were said to have been 
narrated to him “to confirm his heart thereby.” 4 
Isolated and oppressed as he was at the time by 
the powerful hostile interests around him, he was 
hardly in a position to examine or verify these 
life-stories before accepting them finally. The 
result was that a medley of Arabian folk-lore, 
Talmudic legends, and apocryphal gospel was pre¬ 
sented by him as revealed truth to his followers, 
whose faulty memories and interested zeal helped 
to mutilate the facts still further and to such an 
extent at times as to call forth and in a sense 
justify the strictures of later critics. 

In the long list of prophets the Koran gives, 
the name of Hagar, strangely enough, is not 
even once mentioned. However, the prophet 
whom Mohammed regarded as his chief pattern 
and exemplar was Abraham. He was the true 
friend of Allah and, being well-grounded in faith, 
his religion was to be followed by the Faithful. 
Of Moses Mohammed made less than of Abraham; 

1 Adam, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Eber, Abraham, 
Lot, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, 
Jethro, Job, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Obadiah(?), 
Jonah, and Ezra. 

2 Zachariah, John the Baptist, and Jesus. 

3 ^Esop (possibly Balaam), and Alexander. 

4 Sura xi. 121. 


72 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

though the Koran, in connection with Pharaoh, 
speaks of him in greater detail. But the prophet 
that is brought into greatest prominence in the 
Koran was Jesus. He is called both by his 
personal name and by his title of office, and at 
times designated as the servant of Allah or a 
spirit from Him, and as the Word of Truth. He, 
however, is not represented as being of divine 
origin. On the contrary, in the Koran Jesus is 
made to deny in the most explicit terms that he 
had bidden his disciples to take him or his mother 
as directly descended from the Almighty. He is 
not a son of Allah, but a creature of His, the 
same “as Adam was in His sight.” Neverthe¬ 
less, Jesus being a true successor to the former 
prophets, he came to put fresh life and spirit 
into the self-same Religion which mankind had 
inherited from the time of Adam and Abraham. 
It is, moreover, admitted that in his earthly 
mission Jesus was raised to the loftiest height 
of knowledge and inspiration by the Holy Spirit 
of Allah. 

Finally comes Mohammed as the pinnacle and 
perfection of the prophetic office. Notwith¬ 
standing his right to supreme prophetic and 
apostolic function, incomparable to anything that 
has gone before, he never once laid claim to be 
anything more than a mere mortal, subject to 
all the ills of life and freaks of fortune like any 
one of his fellow-creatures all over the world. 
He was a man essentially of the people (ummi) 
who spoke the common tongue and led a life in 


THE IMAN OF MOHAMMED 


73 


every respect in common with them and was in 
very truth and reality the “people’s prophet,” 
foreshadowed in the earlier scriptures. . Though 
Mohammed is the great pattern and sole exemplar 
to the Moslems in every age and clime, yet in 
the Koran Mohammed remains to the end a mere 
man, liable to err and make mistakes like any 
other human being. 1 The conception of him as 
a man apart and unapproachable, as the great 
and faultless prototype of humanity, is purely a 
later invention—the product of an Islamism more 
prepossessed than prepossessing, enthusiastic 
without enthusiasm, preaching doctrines and 
narrating stories unwittingly controverting the 
true intent and purpose of the Prophet's 
mission on earth. 

5. Judgment. 

“ It is appointed unto men once to die and after 
this (cometh) the Judgment.” This text taken 
from the Hebrews epitomises in a sense the 

1 There is a touching story related of the Prophet 
when he went out for the last time into the mosque, 
two days before his death. After the usual prayers he, 
addressing the multitude, said: “Moslems, if I have 
wronged any one of you, here I am to answer for it: 
if I owe aught to anyone, let him proclaim it.” Upon 
hearing this, a voice exclaimed, “ Yes, me three dirhems, 
I gave to a beggar at your request.” They were 
immediately paid back, the Prophet observing, 
“ Better to blush in this world than in the next.” 
Incidents like these reveal the real man, the erring, 
forgetful brother of us all—the veritable Son of our 
common Mother! 


74 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


teaching of the Koran on the subject of “death 
and after." As in the religions preceding it, the 
leading idea of Islam respecting the state of 
existence of the disembodied soul in the world 
everlasting is founded on a belief in the Last 
Judgment. It proclaims that in the great Here¬ 
after every human being will have to render an 
account of all his or her doings on earth before 
the Judgment-Seat of Allah, the most just of 
judges; more, that the happiness or otherwise 
of each individual soul will primarily depend on 
the record presented and the manner in which 
it has striven to carry out the duties laid on it 
by its Creator. However, Allah being the most 
merciful of judges, besides being the most just, 
His Mercy and Grace are within the reach of all 
His creatures, whether of mean capacity or en¬ 
larged, and would be bestowed on all alike, 
whether they were or were not active and zealous 
in His service. 

The above is the pivot round which the whole 
Islamic doctrine of Future Life turns and it is, 
broadly speaking, the only point in that doctrine 
the follower of the Prophet is required to believe 
and accept wholly and unquestioningly. The 
other elements of the Islamic eschatology were 
all more or less caught up from the floating 
traditions as they prevailed among races and 
peoples contemporary with the Prophet and then 
syncretised, and so are, in fact, more illustrative 
and expositive of the fundamental doctrine than 
forming part of it. Take, for examples, the beliefs 


THE IMAN OF MOHAMMED 


75 


in the Resurrection of the Dead and in Heaven 
and Hell. Of the two latter places extremely 
vivid accounts are given in the Koran. In fact, 
Jannat and Jahannam are the betes noires of cer¬ 
tain critics who never feel happy till they have 
got hold of the Prophet’s houris of heaven to 
prove that the Islamic cast of mind was primarily 
mundane and essentially sensual. It cannot be 
denied that the earlier suras contain descriptions 
of Heaven and Hell which are truly deplorable 
and at times revolting. But for that reason to 
say that the Prophet and his immediate disciples 
were sensually inclined or that they captured 
their simple-minded proselytes by post-mortem 
promises of harems of houris and beds of musk 
and saffron, and such other “things as eye hath 
not seen, nor hath ear heard, nor had it entered 
into the heart of man to conceive," is a gross 
perversion of facts. The facts, however, are that 
in those suras the Prophet was addressing him¬ 
self not to minds advanced enough to understand 
and take up the Quest of God and Truth for 
the pure love of them, or the Pursuit of Right 
and Virtue for their own sake, but to the wild 
desert soul of the Arab, steeped in ignorance 
and materialism of the worst type, to whom only 
the ideas of future rewards and punishments 
could act as incentives to the right ordering of 
life and conduct. It was, therefore, necessary 
that the Prophet’s creed of a Future Life should 
be formulated on such lines and in such language 
as would be intelligible to the coarse, common 


76 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


folk of the desert. To the wild, famished heart 
of the Arab used to the great grim expanses of 
the burning deserts, what visions of Paradise 
could be more acceptable than those of rivers 
of wine and gardens of fruits and flowers? Or 
what forecastings of the Infernal Regions could 
be more immediately repellent or effectively de¬ 
terrent than those of the torments of heated 
irons and of insatiable thirst and hunger? The 
simple, open-hearted Arab could conceive of no 
reward or punishment shorn of these sensuous 
pleasures or pains. This is, at all events, the con¬ 
tention of that portion of the Moslem world 
which, like Sana! and Ghazzali, holds that these 
extremely vivid descriptions of Heaven and Hell 
are to be taken, not literally but metaphorically, 
and that the whole teaching of the Prophet on 
the subject is capable of bearing a purely alle¬ 
gorical and spiritual meaning. On the other hand, 
it must be confessed that the general and orthodox 
doctrine is that the whole teaching must be 
accepted and strictly believed in in the obvious 
and literal significance of the terms. It is, how¬ 
ever, admitted on all hands that behind those 
vivid descriptions of the celestial and nether 
regions there assuredly lies a deeper meaning, and 
that the joy of joys, as the torment of torments, 
consists in the veil, which hides the Creator from 
mortal vision, being torn or left untorn, and in 
heavenly glory in all its unspeakable splendour 
being or not being revealed to the soul of the 
person who has passed beyond the bounds of 


THE 1 MAN OF MOHAMMED 


77 


earthly existence. “The most favoured of men,” 
said the Prophet, “will be he who shall see his 
Lord’s face and glory night and day, a felicity 
which will surpass all the pleasures of the body as 
the ocean surpasses a drop of perspiration.” 

Likewise the other great doctrine of the Resur¬ 
rection of the Dead is borrowed from the earlier 
Scriptures. “There can be no doubt,” says Martin 
Haug, “that this important doctrine of the Resur¬ 
rection of the dead is genuine Zoroastrian dogma, 
which developed itself naturally from Spitama 
Zarathushtra’s sayings. There is not the slight¬ 
est trace of its being borrowed from a foreign 
source.” 1 The Jews and the Christians also 
believed in a bodily resurrection, and their 
more definite ideas of it, as those of Mohammed 
himself, were all derived from the original 
Zoroastrian doctrine. 

6 . Decrees. 

The sixth and the last article in the I man of 
Mohammed, and the one that has in a way 
proved the most contentious and factious of 
all, is the Doctrine of Decrees. Various Islamic 
sects and schools of thought which in a large 
measure owe their origin to this doctrine, put 
various and contradictory interpretations on it. 
Simply stated, the doctrine proclaims that what¬ 
ever has happened in the world or shall take 
place in the future, whether it be good or bad, 


1 Essays on the Religion of the Parsis, p. 220. 


78 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


proceeds primarily from the Divine Will and 
is irrevocably fixed and recorded from all 
eternity on the “Preserved Tablet." Saith 
the Prophet: 

“Say, verily, the matter belongeth wholly unto God: 
. . . for Allah knoweth the innermost parts of the 
breast of men: ... no soul can die (or do anything) 
unless by the permission of Allah, according to what 
is written in the book containing the pre-ordination 
of things.” 1 

From the above and various other sayings of 
the Prophet it is evident that he firmly believed 
in and consistently preached the doctrine of Pre¬ 
ordination of Things. There have been in the 
main two great objections levelled against this 
doctrine—namely, that, speaking logically, it 
makes God the author of Evil and that it in¬ 
evitably leads men into indolent acceptance of 
events as they happen, and saps their sense of 
moral responsibility for their acts and motives. 

As to the first charge, we saw in Chapter IV. 
that Evil in the Islamic theory of Creation is 
merely a tool in the hands of the Highest 
performing its appointed task in the ultimate 
furtherance of the inscrutable Divine will and 
purpose. Such being the Moslem conception of 
Evil — as a great reality playing its vital and 
indispensable part in the grand drama of evolving 
humanity—there could be no intelligent objection, 
though I admit there has been and ever will be 
a sentimental one, in making God the one, all- 

1 Sura iii. 139, 148. 


THE IMAN OF MOHAMMED 


79 


dominant creator of all things whatsoever in 
heaven or on earth, as in fact it has been done 
in the Koran itself. 

“Say, whatsoever is in the Heavens and the Earth 
is Allah’s. 1 . . . All measures of good and evil are 
from Allah. . . . Say, Allah is the creator of all things; 
He is the One, the All-dominant! 2 . . . Praise ye, 
therefore, the name of thy Lord the Most High, who 
hath created and balanced all things, who hath fixed 
their measures and guideth them.” 3 

As to the second charge, we have already seen 
in Chapter III. that it is possible for one to believe 
whole-heartedly in the doctrine of Decrees and yet 
lead a life of activity and usefulness in vigorous 
pursuit of one's ideals and ambitions, as is so 
amply proved by the strenuous life which the 
great propounder and promoter of the doctrine 
himself led. Again, on the problem of man’s 
moral responsibility for his acts and motives the 
Moslem opinion is sharply divided. The Shiahs 
on the whole affirm man's responsibility, while 
Sunnites as a class deny it. We do not wonder 
that there should be a division of opinion in 
this complicated matter of human responsibility, 
seeing that the Prophet himself was never at any 
time so wholly explicit, nor logical, nor even con¬ 
sistent on this point as he was on other points 
of his teaching. For instance, in sura iv. 8i, it 
is clearly said: “Whatever good betideth thee is 
from God, and whatever betideth thee of evil is 

1 Sura iii. 124. 2 Sura xiii. 17. 

3 Sura lxxxvii. 1, 2. 3. 


8 o THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


from thyself.” And yet in the text immediately 
preceding the last it is said with equal explicit- 
ness: “If good fortune betide them, they say, 
‘This is from Allah’; and if evil betide them, 
they say, ‘This is from thee.’ Say, All is from 
Allah. But what hath come to these people that 
they are not near to understanding what is told 
them ? ” 1 So repeatedly and in such varied forms 
is the latter view—namely, “All is from Allah ” 
—upheld that we should be quite justified in 
maintaining that the source and inspirer of all 
human actions and motives was the Creator Him¬ 
self. He it is who “misleadeth whom He will 
and whom He will He guideth.” He again it is 
“who forgiveth whom He will, and whom He will 
chastiseth.” Wholly arbitrary as His Judgment 
may appear and cruelly inexorable as His Will 
may seem to limited human vision, yet all the 
glory and grandeur of human life consists in 
developing, in direct contradiction of that limited 
vision, a living Faith in the supreme Wisdom and 
perfect Justice of God’s will and purpose and 
at the same time finding a working creed in the 
famous exhortation: 

"What shapest thou here at the world? ’Tis shapen 
long ago: 

The Maker shaped it. He thought it best even so. 

Thy lot is appointed—Go follow its hest; 

Thy journey’s begun—Thou must move and not rest; 

For sorrow and care cannot alter thy case. 

And running, not raging, will win thee the race.” 


1 Sura iv. 80. 


THE DIN OF MOHAMMED 


"The Din of Mohammed, with its stern discipline and 
its severe morality, has proved itself the only practical 
religion for natures which are prone to drift into a lawless 
materialism." 


Syed Ameer Ali. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE DIN OF MOHAMMED 

Generally speaking, there are two sides to a 
religion—the Speculative and the Practical: and 
the more vital the religion is, the more evenly 
are the two sides adjusted. Should, however, 
the Speculative side predominate, the religion 
gets unbalanced, gradually loses its hold on the 
masses and becomes a mere barren metaphysical 
system, like the later Brahmanism, more suited 
for whiling away the leisure of a philosophic 
mind than for guiding the erring, struggling, 
aspiring human soul in its uncertain journey here 
towards its distant goal beyond. If, on the other 
hand, the Practical preponderates, the religion 
stands in danger of being crushed by the sheer 
weight of its own dead mass of rules and rites 
which, degenerating sooner or later into mere 
routine and superstition, eventually ends, like 
the Pharisaical Judaism of the time of Christ, 
in a gilded, soulless anachronism. The Religion 
of Mohammed, much as it may fall short of the 
claim to being reckoned as the highest religion of 
mankind, can with justice be described as being 
the most vital of all the living religions of the 
world, not excluding even Christianity. Conse¬ 
quently, we ought to expect an attempt made 

83 


84 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

therein to preserve the necessary balance between 
the two sides. And we are not disappointed in 
our expectations, for counterbalancing the six 
fundamental articles of Faith are the five basic 
duties or rules of religious practice with the sixth 
and completing great Law of Life, unfolded under 
the familiar and comprehensive term Shan ah. 

The above five duties or rules of religious 
practice to all intents and purposes compose 
the Din of Mohammed which may be considered 
under the following five heads: 

1. The Confession of Faith. 

2. Prayers. 

3. Almsgiving. 

4. Fasting. 

5. Pilgrimage. 

1. The Confession of Faith. 

As this duty is not primarily mentioned or 
specifically enjoined in the Koran, some ex¬ 
pounders of Islam consider that it is not included 
in the Din of Mohammed. But the Prophet being 
himself commanded to preach and magnify the 
name of Allah, and as he stands for all time as 
the great pattern and exemplar to all Believers, 
we should be justified in considering the Con¬ 
fession of Faith both as a religious practice of 
primary importance to all Believers alike and as 
a matter of solemn obligation to those of them 
who are actively employed in the preaching and 
propagation of the name of Allah. In its narrower 


THE DIN OF MOHAMMED 


85 


sense the Confession consists in the practice of 
the recital of the sacred Kalimet at proper times 
and with due reverence. In its more compre¬ 
hensive aspect it resolves itself into a duty which 
is to be carried out with equal care and devotion 
in two directions: (a) subjectively, as affecting 
the personal attitude of the Believer, by the 
practice of taqwa or piety; ( b ) objectively, by 
regulating his whole life on the fundamental con¬ 
ception of Islam—namely, of the complete and 
whole-hearted submission of one’s self and one’s 
possessions to the supreme will and purpose of 
the Deity. 

(a) Taqwa literally means fear or abstinence. 
In its expanded form it means the fear of Allah 
which keeps one away from idolatry and other 
evils of a like nature. Essentially, however, taqwa 
or piety consists in wholly believing in the truth, 
in being absolutely sincere in worship and in 
carefully and continuously preparing one’s soul 
for the life to come. Not the flesh of sacrifice 
nor the blood of martyrdom but the piety of the 
Faithful reaches Allah. Like Jesus, Mohammed 
taught that the pious are meek and lowly of 
heart, patient and forbearing, ever conscious and 
penitent of their own failings and weaknesses and 
unswervingly just and scrupulously fair in all 
their dealings with their fellow-men. The creed 
of their life is devotion; their maxim, modera¬ 
tion ; their ideal, purity. These they practise not 
out of any superstitious fear or dread of Allah but 
from pure, heartfelt love and reverence of Him. 


86 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


(b) Islam, as we have already seen, sums up 
in one word the whole gospel of Mohammed, and 
means primarily the glad submission of Man’s to 
God’s will, or rather the merging of the short¬ 
sighted, self-centred will of Man into the all- 
embracing, all-subtilising will of God. Islam is, 
as in fact it is said in sura ii. 32, “the baptism 
(sibghah) of Allah.” It is at once His primary 
rule and a high road to Him, and is only ac¬ 
ceptable to Him if professed in its entirety and 
lived up to whole-heartedly, and when a con¬ 
tinuous and strenuous spiritual fight is put up 
with oneself and with others in its defence and 
for its propagation. 

2. Prayers. 

One of the most important institutions of 
Mohammed is Prayer. So important, indeed, did 
the Prophet think prayer to be, that he used to 
call it “the pillar of religion” and “the key of 
Paradise”; and when the Thakifites came on a 
mission to him and begged of him to exempt 
them from his ordinance of daily prayers, the 
Prophet returned the celebrated answer: 

“ There could be no good in that religion wherein 
no prayer was enjoined.” 

That so important a religious practice might 
not be neglected by his followers, Mohammed 
enjoined that they should pray five times a day 
at certain stated intervals, and instituted the 
office of muezzin to call the Faithful to prayer 


THE DIN OF MOHAMMED 


87 


at those fixed hours. The Believers, while saying 
their prayers, are required to turn their faces 
towards that home and hearth of Moslem reli¬ 
gious fervour and aspirations, the holy city of 
Mecca, to chaunt them in a well-modulated voice, 
and to adopt certain postures and prostrate 
themselves after a set fashion. A stranger watch¬ 
ing the Faithful at prayer and noticing these 
manifold prostrations and strange genuflexions, 
and not realising the inward value and immediate 
utility of these set prayers and postures, is apt 
to speak of them lightly, if not slightingly. 

“According to the Moslem theory/' says a 
Christian critic, “prayer is reduced to a gym-*-, 
nastic exercise and a mechanical act.” No wonder 
that the average, matter-of-fact Christian, habit¬ 
uated to the hebdomadal flocking into churches 
and chapels, and the otiose worship of droning 
prelates and chaunting monks, should look on 
the prostrating Faithfuls at their daily prayers 
with amused indifference and superior levity! 
But one has to realise the intensity of the devo¬ 
tional spirit embalmed in the creed of Mohammed 
to understand the part played by Prayer in it. 

In the first place, it must be remembered that 
the Islam of Mohammed recognises no caste or 
order of priesthood, allows no monopoly of 
spiritual knowledge and admits no claims of 
special holiness to intervene between Man and 
his Creator. In Islam, consequently, no minis¬ 
tration of a priest or intermediation of a hiero¬ 
phant save that of prayers is needed to bring the 


88 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


individual soul into communion with the All-Soul. 
Nor need the anxious heart resort to any sacri¬ 
fice or call to its aid any ceremonial except 
prayers in seeking the comfort and solace of the 
Great Comforter. 

Islamic prayers are of two kinds: salat or set 
prayers, and du'd or spontaneous prayers. The 
former are obligatory on all the Believers, the 
latter are mostly a matter of one’s own option 
and of special occasion. But in either form the 
value of Prayer as a means of moral elevation 
and the purification of the heart is, according 
to the Prophet’s teaching, unquestionable. It is 
true that it was the practice of the Prophet to 
associate certain simple rites and rules of prac¬ 
tical hygiene with his saying of prayers, and 
such rules and rites are also enjoined on his 
disciples; but he was careful to explain that the 
most punctilious observance of the external rites 
and ceremonies was of little or no avail if the 
inward disposition of the heart, which is the life 
and spirit of prayer, was lacking in grace and 
fellow-feeling, “in purity and humility of spirit.” 1 
The Prophet proclaimed: 

“There is no piety in turning your faces towards the 
east or towards the west, but he is pious who believeth 
in Allah, and the Last Day, and the Angels, and the 
Scriptures, and the Prophets; who for the love of Allah 
disburseth his wealth to the kindred, and to the orphans, 
and the needy, and the wayfarer, and those who ask, 
and for ransoming; who observeth Prayer, and payeth 
the legal alms, and who is of those who are faithful 

1 Sura vii. 204. 


THE DIN OF MOHAMMED 


89 

to their engagements when they have engaged in them, 
and patient under ills and hardships, and in time of 
trouble: these are they who are just, and these are 
they who fear the Lord.” 1 

In the present state of our highly-organised 
and widely-ramified civilisation this simple rule 
of religious practice which Mohammed enjoined 
on all his followers—namely, of saying set prayers 
five times a day at stated intervals, is of the most 
immediate and vital use to us all, even to those 
who are outside the Islamic fold. In the incessant 
clamour and rush of modern life our eyes and 
ears, our brains and nerves so suffer from over- 
stimulation that they get exhausted and show 
all the signs of age and decay long before their 
time. People in the great cities of the West 
tread a vicious circle in haste and without rest: 
such a mode of existence must sooner or later 
tell on their health and strength and eventually 
end in their partial, if not complete breakdown. 
“Americans are rushing madly to the grave," 
says Dr. Eugene Fisk, the President of the Life 
Extension Institute of New York, “lashing them¬ 
selves into fictitious activity with stimulants of 
health-wrecking devices and discoveries as they 
gallop through life. Americans do not overwork, 
do too little thinking, but do everything hurriedly 
and heedlessly. If they do not want to head 
straight into a national future of insanity, suicide, 
and drug-taking, they have simply got to call a 
halt!" Consequently, in the modern world of 

1 Sura ii. 172. 


90 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

hurry and hustle the Prophet’s ordinance of 
Prayer is of special and immediate use to us all, 
inasmuch as it would, if adopted, compulsorily 
“ call a halt” at fixed intervals each day in the 
life of each one of us, which besides refreshing 
our spirit, would give a chance to our fatigued 
brains and nerves to recreate themselves for the 
time being. 

3. Almsgiving. 

All religions, especially those of Jesus and 
Zoroaster, speak of Charity in high terms and 
inculcate its practice in the form of almsgiving 
as a thing of special merit and pleasing to God. 
But, with the exception of Zoroastrianism, no 
religion of the world prior to Islam had con¬ 
secrated Almsgiving as a great principle of life, 
nor had any of the Prophets laid it down as one 
of the fundamental tenets of his creed as the 
Prophet of Islam did. With them it was a pious 
exhortation, a virtue worthy of being cultivated, 
but not a solemn obligation nor a fixed rule de¬ 
manding that instant obedience and life-long prac¬ 
tice from their disciples which Mohammed most 
emphatically demanded from his. Almsgiving 
in his system was, in fact, systematically coupled 
with Prayer as a mark of the true Believer. 
Like Prayer, again, it is of two kinds: Zcikat, 
signifying obligatory alms; and Sadaqah, volun¬ 
tary offerings. The former is essential to religion 
and signifies a kind of tax levied on various 
kinds of property and income at a fixed rate. 


THE DIN OF MOHAMMED 


9i 


This compulsory tax was to be exacted not only 
from the Believers, but also from defeated foes 
who accepted Islam and thus became brothers 
in the faith. The second kind of almsgiving, 
though largely a matter of choice and conve¬ 
nience, is none the less a proof of the Believer’s 
sincerity in the worship of God and of his good¬ 
will towards his fellow-kind. Both are to be 
given from what one can spare after providing 
one’s self and family with the indispensable 
necessities of life: and yet in the Koran it is 
said, “Ye cannot attain to true piety until ye 
expend in alms of what ye love and cherish.’’ 1 

4. Fasting. 

The practice of Fasting, like that of charity, 
has prevailed among all peoples and has been 
enjoined in one form or another by all religions 
with perhaps the solitary exception of Zoroas¬ 
trianism. But speaking generally the idea with 
which it was preached and practised in the pre- 
Islamic period was that of penitence rather than 
that of abstinence. Both in Judaism and Chris¬ 
tianity Fasting was primarily a mode of expiation 
to which the penitent heart resorted as an assured 
way of making amends for its delinquencies. Its 
practice as an exercise of self-abnegation was of 
subsequent growth. In Islam, on the contrary, 
Fasting was from the very beginning instituted 
as a means of acquiring greater control over one’s 
self by keeping in check for stated periods its 

1 Sura iii. 86. 


92 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

natural desires and inclinations. In other words, 
it is a means of chastening the spirit by a diurnal 
abstinence for a fixed and limited period from all 
gratification of the senses. It was during the 
sacred month of Ramazan that this practice of 
self-abnegation was enjoined on all Believers. 
But with that eye for the practical, which is 
such a distinguishing feature of the religious code 
of Mohammed, he exempted the traveller, the 
soldier, the student and those who were weak 
and ailing from observing the fast during the 
month of Ramazan, provided they fasted later 
on when able. 

5. Pilgrimage. 

Mohammed with the true instinct of a prophet 
and the unerring insight of a born psychologist 
perceived that the vagrant ideas and fleeting 
emotions of his careless, shiftless followers were 
likely to be dissipated unless conserved by 
bringing them to a focus on some central object 
of immediate and absorbing interest to them. 
Consequently, to fix these fleeting fancies and 
to create a kind of spiritual bond among the 
widely-scattered believers in the new faith, he 
enjoined that everywhere throughout the world 
the Moslem should pray turning his face towards 
the Kaabh in Mecca. Likewise, to forge out of 
that purely spiritual bond of prayer a visible 
solidarity of thought and feeling and a real 
brotherhood of faith, he instituted the custom 
of annual Pilgrimage to Mecca and the shrine of 


THE DIN OF MOHAMMED 


93 


the Kaabh. Here in the appointed month, when 
the Moslems from all over the world foregather 
and tread the soil hallowed by the feet of their 
Prophet and consecrated by the blood of their 
martyrs, they feel drawn to their faith and their 
fellow-believers in a manner which none outside 
their fold can even faintly realise. The Holy 
City with its sacred relics and desert surroundings 
carries the Moslem back to the early struggles and 
later achievements of his Prophet and Saviour. 
It vividly portrays to his mind’s eye the 
death-grip of the old, effete faith on the bounding 
impulse of the new, the long-drawn struggle and 
the eventful destruction of the crumbling idols 
and the re-establishment of the ancient worship 
of the One and Only God. Most of all it bids 
him remember that all that are gathered on that 
sacred spot are his brother-Moslems, united to 
him by the same great faith, actuated by the 
same great ideals, worshipping the same great 
God and yielding obedience to the same great 
Prophet. Here again the practical wisdom and 
accommodative spirit of this great Lawgiver of 
Islam shines forth in two directions: in laying 
down certain conditions which the pilgrim had 
to fulfil before starting on his intended journey, 
and in prescribing the ceremonies which were to 
be performed once he had entered the Holy City. 
As to the former, five conditions were laid down: 
namely, the pilgrim should (i) have attained 
the age of discretion; (2) have means sufficient 
to maintain those dependent on him during 


94 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

his absence; (3) be himself in possession of the 
means of transport and subsistence during the 
entire journey; (4) be in a position to leave his 
work without causing any dislocation or incon¬ 
venience to anyone; (5) assure himself before 
starting of the possibility and practicability of 
the voyage. As to the ceremonies prescribed, 
they were mostly those observed by the Pagan 
Arabs centuries before the Prophet’s appearance: 
consequently, the critics of Islam characterise 
them "not only as silly and ridiculous in them¬ 
selves, but as relics of idolatrous superstition.” 1 
It must at once be admitted that the greater 
part of these prescribed rites are of no intrinsic 
worth, as they are neither conducive to the 
spiritual elevation of the Pilgrim nor capable of 
undergoing any rational tests, but are altogether 
arbitrary and enjoined apparently with a view 
to conciliate the known bigotry and conservatism 
of the Arab mind. We all know how with certain 
types of men the most trivial and insignificant 
things of life are the objects of greatest venera¬ 
tion and superstition. Mohammed found such 
to be the case with the type of men he had to 
deal with. He found it much easier to abolish 
idolatry itself than to eradicate the ingrained 
superstitious awe and bigotry of the Arabs for 
their age-worn temple and the ancient cere¬ 
monials attached to it. While the Prophet 
remained adamant and uncompromising on the 
fundamental articles of his faith, he was par- 

1 Sale’s Koran, sect. v. 


THE DIN OF MOHAMMED 


95 


ticularly accommodative and conciliatory in the 
non-essential points of his creed. Consequently, 
rather than frustrate his main design of Pil¬ 
grimage, he not only allowed them their ancient 
rites and ceremonial processions, but with due 
reverence took part in them himself. However, 
before joining in those rites and processions he 
took care to make certain changes in their mode 
of performance so as to lead the surging torrents 
of reverential feelings evoked away from the 
sacred things themselves to the great Source of 
all things whatever, thus following the example 
of the great legislators of old—who instituted not 
such laws as were absolutely the best in them¬ 
selves, but the best their people were capable of 
receiving and what the nature of circumstances 
would permit of adopting in an era of transition. 




























THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 


H 


“ The sacred institutions of the Prophet are the most sub¬ 
lime and the most beneficent sources for the spiritual evolution 
and moral regeneration of the people of all Islamic lands.” 

Mustapha Kemal Pasha. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 

In the first three chapters we dealt with ideas 
that lay at the foundations of Islam, while in 
the last three chapters we surveyed the super¬ 
structure of Salvation, Faith and Duties, which 
the Prophet raised on them. The great architect 
of Islam was, however, not content with merely 
laying down the foundations and raising the 
superstructure of a purely religious institution, 
but aspired to the erection of a mighty edifice 
of general rules and regulations, covering the 
entire stretch of Life itself. Consequently, the 
authority of the Prophet as the revealer of the 
will and purpose of Allah extended not only to 
matters strictly religious, but to all the varied 
affairs and pursuits of Life—political and mili¬ 
tary, civil and criminal, social and domestic. In 
other words, the Prophet’s revelations in the 
Koran embody and unfold the whole Law of Life. 

Of law as such there is little mention. The 
familiar term sharVah occurs but once 1 in the 
Koran, and the cognate word shi/ah is likewise 
mentioned once only. 2 There is nothing like the 
Decalogue of Moses in the Koran, though there 

1 Sura xlv. 17. 2 Sura v. 52. 

99 




100 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


are several sets of commands and exhortations, 
precepts and prohibitions which go to indicate 
that Mohammed had the Jewish, Christian and 
other religious systems in mind when he gave 
out his own code of commands and prohibitions. 
The code, however, has to be gathered out of 
scattered passages in various suras, such as vi. 
152-165; xvi. 92-128; xvii. 23-40; xxv. 64-76; 
and xxxi. 12-18. Neither in the above suras 
nor in any other shorter summaries can we detect 
any distinct principle or even a definite mode of 
arrangement. However, the most systematic of 
these summaries is that contained in sura xvii. 
The commands contained therein may be briefly 
given under the following twelve heads: 

1. Set not up other gods with Allah. 

2. Be kind and respectful to parents and defer 
out of tenderness to their wishes. 

3. Give what is due to kinsmen, to the poor 
and to the wayfarer. 

4. Be not wasteful nor be ungrateful, for Satan 
was ungrateful to his Lord. 

5. Do not be sparing nor yet be lavish, lest 
thou sit thee down in rebuke and in beggary. 

6. Slay not your children for fear of poverty. 

7. Draw not near to fornication nor to the 
wealth of the orphan. 

8. Slay not anyone except for a just cause. 

9. Keep your covenants faithfully. 

10. Give full measure and weigh with just 
balance. 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED ioi 


11. Give no heed to reports of which thou 
hast no knowledge. 

12. Walk not proudly on the earth. “All of 
these things are evil and odious unto the Lord.” 

Of those virtues especially enjoined in the 
Islamic system, the ruling one was that which 
has consistently been advanced in the earlier 
Mazdayasnian creed — namely, Temperance or 
avoidance of excess. In other words, the Islamic 
system inculcates liberality without extravagance; 
kindness to all without being actually indulgent; 
making the best of men and circumstances as 
one finds them; “returning evil by that which 
is better”; fairness in dealings, truthfulness in 
giving evidence, faithfulness to engagements, 
obedience to those in authority, patience under 
ills and hardships of life, and endurance in time 
of trouble; and to sum up in brief, Constancy 
and Continence in all acts of life, and unques¬ 
tioning Obedience to Allah and to His Prophet in 
all that is right. But the epitome of the Prophet’s 
works and teachings, which moves the Moslem 
most and is not without its immediate appeal 
to all men alike, is that which Jafar, son of Abu 
Talib, the brother of Ali, gave in reply to Negus, 
the Christian king of Abyssinia, to whose court he 
had fled with the first batch of Moslem refugees. 
When Negus sent for the refugees and asked 
them, “What is this religion of yours for which 
you have abandoned your home, your people and 
your creed, and adopted a faith that is neither 


102 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


mine nor of any people I know of ?” Jafar, acting 
as spokesman for the fugitives, addressed the 
king thus: 

“ Hear us, O king! We were a horde of idol-worshippers 
given to blood-feuds and excess of all kinds: we ate 
dead bodies and practised abominable rites; we knew 
no law but that of the strong, and as we were immersed 
in the utmost depths of ignorance and superstition, we 
disregarded every feeling of humanity and our duties 
to our neighbours and our fellow-beings. When we 
were thus irretrievably lost in the depths of darkness 
and degradation, Allah, O king, took mercy on us and 
raised among us a man; of whose birth, purity, truth¬ 
fulness and integrity all alike bear the highest testimony. 
He it was who taught us the unity of God and besought 
us not to associate anything with Him. He it was who 
forbade us the worship of idols and enjoined us to speak 
the truth, to be faithful to our trusts and covenants, 
to regard the rights of neighbours and to be kind and 
merciful to all. He commanded us not to ill-use our 
women, nor to speak evil of them, nor eat the substance 
of orphans. He further ordered us to offer prayers, to 
give alms, to observe the fast, to fly vices and abstain 
from evil of every kind. We have believed in him, we 
have accepted his teachings and his injunction to wor¬ 
ship God alone, and not to associate anything with 
Him. This has been our fault, O king, for which our 
kith and kin have risen against us, called down curses 
on our heads and so ill-used us in every other way that 
finding no peace and safety among them, we have, 
O king, come to your country to seek your protection 
and crave your mercy!” 

The salient features of Islamic ideals and legis¬ 
lation as unfolded in the Koran are very succinctly 
brought out by the above address of Jafar; let 
us now see what the same great book of Islam 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 103 

has to say about the particular departments of 
life and society—namely, about Government, 
Khalifate, Women, Slavery, Laws (civil and 
criminal), Regulations (social, domestic and cere¬ 
monial), and finally about Warfare, Religious 
Tolerance and Human Brotherhood. 

Government. 

As in all things Islamic, the Koran is relied 
on as the basis of all government in the Moslem 
states. Yet, strangely enough, the great Book 
of Islamic Revelations lays down no definite 
system of political institutions, nor does it ad¬ 
vance any concrete theory of government beyond 
outlining the bare form of theocracy. The fact, 
however, was that political power was so wholly 
centred in the person of the Prophet and his 
authority was so dominant and unchallenged, 
that whatever ordinances were needed on par¬ 
ticular occasions were immediately promulgated 
by him in his capacity of rasul or messenger 
of God, and all that the Faithful had to 
do was quietly to receive and obey them. 
The absence of specific direction in the matter 
of state legislation was a cause of immediate 
perplexity and bitter strife after the Prophet's 
demise, and to overcome these difficulties various 
offices, secular and religious, had to be created. 

An examination of the political condition and 
institutes of the Moslems under the immediate 
successors of the Prophet brings into view a 
government more or less popular, administered 


104 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

by an elected head with powers strictly limited. 
The prerogatives of the head of the state were 
chiefly confined to executive and administrative 
functions, such as the regulation of the police, 
control of the army, transaction of foreign affairs, 
disbursement of the revenue, and appointments 
to various offices of state. The tribunals were, 
however, left free to determine their awards and 
deliver their judgments as would best meet the 
ends of justice. In fact, even in that early 
age the Law was the same for the poor as 
for the rich, for the man in power as for the 
labourer in the field. On the whole, Islam gave 
to the people a code which, however archaic 
in its principles and structure, was broad-based 
enough to be capable of unlimited development 
with the progress of material civilisation. At all 
events, it conferred on the state a flexible consti¬ 
tution based on a just appreciation of human 
rights and human duties. It not only made men 
equal in the eye of the law, but by defining the 
source and limiting the amount of taxation it 
unconsciously introduced one of the first prin¬ 
ciples of self-government in the conduct of the 
state. It established, besides, a control over 
the sovereign power by rendering the executive 
authority subordinate to the law—a law based 
upon certain religious sanctions and other moral 
obligations involved in the Koran. 

As time advanced and the reins of government 
fell into the hands of usurping tyrants, even then 
the outward form of a law-abiding executive 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 105 

head was consistently maintained, though the 
stringency of the system had much relaxed and 
practically disappeared. For instance, every 
Friday, after divine service, the Commander of 
the Faithful formally announced to the assembly 
the important nominations and events of the 
day. Technically everyone had the right of 
attending these general assemblies of the public, 
and no one was excluded from them. And as 
the prefects in their several provinces strictly 
followed the example of their head in this respect, 
no person in the camp or the city was a stranger 
to public affairs and, consequently, one might 
be justified in making a general statement that 
while in Europe and the rest of Asia the people 
possessed no recognised civil rights or political 
privileges, and while the peasantry of those 
countries was labouring under the badge of 
both praedial servitude and domestic slavery, 
the Islamic lands enjoyed, though in a rudi¬ 
mentary form, the basic rights and privileges of 
a real democracy. 

Khali fate. 

Alas for the greed of earthly power and the 
anarchic instincts of individuals, the lands of 
Islam, like the rest, did not escape the curse of 
religious strife and dynastic wars. The Church 
of Mohammed, like the Church of Christ, has 
been rent by internal divisions and sacerdotal 
greed ever since the Prophet’s demise. On ab¬ 
stract subjects, about which in our finite existence 


io6 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


there could not in the nature of things be 
any certitude or finality, difference of opinion 
always will arise and must arise. But most of 
the differences and divisions in the Church of 
Mohammed owe their origin primarily to political 
and dynastic quarrels and the strong feeling of 
jealousy which animated the other Koreishites 
against the family of the Prophet. 

It is generally supposed that the Prophet had 
not expressly designated anyone as his successor 
in the spiritual and temporal government of 
Islam. This supposition, however, is founded 
on a mistaken apprehension of facts: for there 
is abundant evidence to prove that, though 
Mohammed had never expressly stated, he had 
yet on many occasions unmistakably indicated 
his son-in-law Ali for the vicegerency. Never¬ 
theless, to that supposition, erroneous as it was, 
might be ultimately traced all the divisions and 
dissensions that crept into the Islamic fold after 
the Prophet’s passing away. 

We need not stop here to trace the chequered 
history of the beliefs prevailing among the several 
Moslem sects, nor to recount the many names 
and varied fortunes of their several successive 
heads. Nor do we intend to be drawn here into 
that age-long controversy, as futile as incon¬ 
clusive, of “the true Imamate,” for fear of our 
being lost in “the wand’ring mazes” of Sunnite 
schoolmen and Shiite casuists. Sufficient be it 
for our present purpose to make a general state¬ 
ment that the Imam as the spiritual exemplar 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 107 

and leader of Islam must be a man approximating 
as closely as possible to the Prophet in character, 
intellect, and spirituality. More, that in his dual 
capacity of Sultan-Khalifa — as the vicar and 
lieutenant of the Prophet, and as the temporal 
head of the state and the commander of the 
Faithful—he must be in possession of sufficient 
authority and independence to maintain the 
dignity and high office of his apostolic succession 
and keep intact his religio-juridical rights over 
“the Holy Places of Islam”—namely, over 
Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, and Kerbalah. 

Strictly speaking, the Imamate or the Khalif- 
ate should be as indivisible as the Papacy. But 
as three Popes have from time to time laid claim 
to the triple crown, so have three Khalifs to the 
supreme rule and headship of the three Islamic 
portions of the earth. Of the three aspirants, 
the Sultan of Turkey, however, has the best 
claim to the title and dignity of Khalif. Not 
only has he been the undisputed holder of the 
insignia of the Khalifate—the banner, the sword 
and the mantle of the Prophet, but the actual 
Warden of the Holy Places for the last few cen¬ 
turies. He has been, besides, the most powerful 
of the Moslem rulers, and his suzerainty over 
Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia and Hedjaz—that 
is, the whole of the Jazirat-ul-Arab—was never 
questioned before the War. But since the defeat 
of the Turks in the War and the newly awakened 
zeal and enthusiasm of Indian Moslems for the 
reformation and redintegration of their ancient 


io8 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


faith, the problem of the suzerainty of the Jazirat- 
ul-Arab and the Wardenship of the Holy Places 
—in fact, the whole question of the Khalifate— 
has in many ways assumed the importance 
of a world-problem. 

Such an importance, indeed, do the upholders 
of the Khalifate attach to it that they speak of 
it as if it were the key-stone of the Islamic arch 
which, if neglected or in any way disturbed, 
would endanger the whole span of their religion. 
Its detractors, on the other hand, contend that 
the bare fact that the Prophet did not expressly 
mention his successor nor leave any unimpeach¬ 
able ordinance on the subject beyond what 
might be called recommendatory behests, argu¬ 
able and inconclusive, proves in itself that he 
did not consider that the Khalifate was an 
article of his faith having the same vital and 
fundamental importance as the other articles 
about which he had left positive and indisputable 
commandments. Consequently, they consider the 
question of the Khalifate as being more senti¬ 
mental than real, and the Shiah Mussulmans of 
Persia even go so far as to maintain that it is pure 
blasphemy for a Moslem to apply the name of 
“Caliph” and the title of Amir-el-Mu‘min or the 
Commander of the Faithful to anyone except 
Caliph Ali ibn Amu-Talib of blessed memory. 

Though there is a distinct vein of exaggeration 
running through the above assertions of the de¬ 
tractors of the Khalifate, no honest or impartial 
expounder of the faith of Mohammed would care 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 109 

to dispute that there is a substratum of truth in 
their argument. It may be that the question of 
the Khalifate, more so the present agitation about 
it, is more sentimental than real. But it is based 
on a noble sentiment which oftentimes in the 
spiritual affairs of men counts for more than the 
mere hard and fast articles of faith. And it is a 
sentiment which, inspired by the great past of 
Islam, endeavours to preserve intact and un¬ 
diminished for the future what is left of its an¬ 
cient glory and power. Nay, more, it aspires to 
revive the old religious discipline and enthusiasm 
among its vast and heterogeneous following by 
breathing fresh life and vigour into the old law 
and tradition. For such an awakening of Islam, 
however, a nucleus—a rallying-point—is needed 
to bring together the slowly-disintegrating reli¬ 
gious instincts of the Faithful and muster up the 
scattered spiritual forces of A 1 Islam. Conse¬ 
quently, all who have the good of Islam at heart 
and wish her well, cannot but hope that the 
Khalifate would be firmly established before 
long, and established not on the thin fabric of 
past reputation and dead postulates, but on the 
solid ground-work of present credit and more 
living issues: more, that the new Khalifa would 
be given the necessary authority and indepen¬ 
dence to allow him to recover as much as 
possible of the lost power and prestige of that 
old historic institution which is embodied in his 
person and finds expression in his acts. 


no THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


Women. 

In no matter concerning Mohammed’s religion 
have Christian writers shown greater hostility 
to Islam than in their scathing denunciation of 
the Islamic institution of plurality of wives, nor 
on any point of the Prophet’s life and character 
have they been less sparing of their wild vitu¬ 
peration than on that of his several marriages. 
We can understand and applaud the noble zeal 
and ardour of those writers for the sacred cause 
of Monogamy, but we can neither understand 
nor approve of their hasty and unqualified 
arraignment of the Prophet and of his charac¬ 
teristic institution. 

In the first place let us remember that among 
all ancient nations, Eastern and Western, Poly¬ 
gamy was more or less a recognised institution. 
Among the ancient Medes, Persians, Assyrians 
and Babylonions, as among the ancient Greeks, 
Romans, Germans, and even the primitive Chris¬ 
tians, until forbidden by the Laws of Justinian, 
Polygamy in one form or another consistently 
and universally prevailed. Therefore, the first 
fact to be borne in mind is that Mohammed was 
not the first to adopt nor the first to legalise 
Polygamy, which flourished unchecked all over 
the then known world. On the contrary, the 
reforms promulgated by the Prophet in this 
direction not only toned down the worst features 
of the institution itself, but effected a marked 
improvement in the status of Women as a class. 
Another fact to be remembered is that Polygamy 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED hi 

often is purely the outcome of circumstances. At 
certain times and in certain stages of civilisation, 
its practice is made a matter of sheer necessity 
for the preservation of the weaker sex from actual 
starvation and consequent destitution. And the 
condition of Women at the time of the Prophet’s 
appearance among the settled pagan Arabs was 
such as to make the system of plurality of wives 
imperatively necessary. Witness the horrible 
custom of the pagan Arabs of burying alive their 
female infants for fear of the child having even¬ 
tually to pass her life in unmated indigence oi 
in uncared-for concubinage. 

In the social scale of both the Persian and 
Byzantine empires, the Women occupied a very 
low place indeed. At a time when the social 
fabric was crumbling to pieces on all sides and 
Women were the greatest sufferers in the general 
disintegration, Mohammed introduced his regula¬ 
tions, which went to give certain status to them, 
and created thereby a kind of respect for them. 
Before his time a woman in the household of 
pagan Arabs was a mere chattel, and the widows 
of the father, apart from the mother, descended 
to the son like any other portion of his patrimony, 
which he could dispose of as he felt inclined. 
Mohammed interdicted this horrible custom and 
secured to the widows rights which they never 
enjoyed before, and, in fact, in the exercise ot 
all legal powers and functions he placed Women 
on a footing of perfect equality with men. For 
instance, Marriage in Islam being a civil act 


112 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


requiring no priest nor any ceremonial, the rights 
of a wife as a mother do not depend for their 
recognition upon the whims of any individual 
judge, but upon the actual text in the book of 
Law. Her earnings acquired by her own exer¬ 
tions cannot be claimed by her husband, nor 
can she be ill-treated by him with impunity. 
In all matters pertaining to herself and her own 
individual property she acts sui juris without the 
intervention of husband or father, nor is she 
compelled to join anyone, as is the case in English 
Law, to make valid her claim on her debtors. In 
other words, the contract of marriage gives the 
man no power over the woman’s person, beyond 
what the law defines, and none whatever upon her 
goods and property. Consequently, the Woman 
in Islam, married or single, has practically all 
the rights which the Law gives to men. 

It is evident from the above that it is wrong 
to call down anathemas on the institutions of 
Mohammed relative to Women and grossly unfair 
to attribute to him their present backward con¬ 
dition in Islamic lands. This latter is due more 
to want of culture and educational facilities 
among the community than to any radical defects 
in the laws themselves. However, the case is 
different when we come to discuss the principle 
of plurality of wives in Islamic Law and seek 
justification for the several marriages of the 
Prophet himself. It has been contended by 
Syed Ameer Ali and other Moslem scholars of 
advanced views that polygamy is " contrary to 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 113 

the spirit of Islam,” and ‘‘is as much opposed 
to the teachings of Mohammed as it is to the 
general progress of civilised society and true 
culture.” 1 In support of this contention of 
theirs they quote the celebrated third verse from 
the great sura on Women , which says: 

“And if ye are apprehensive that ye shall not deal 
fairly with orphans, then, of other women who seem 
good in your eyes, take in marriage two, or three or 
four, but not more. Still if ye fear that ye shall not 
be able to act equitably towards all of them—then 
marry one only.” 

Owing to the great importance of the latter 
proviso and of the word adl (equity) in the 
Koranic teachings, “the first Mutazalite doctors 
taught,” argues Mr. Ameer Ali, “that the deve¬ 
loped Koranic laws inculcated monogamy.” 2 

While one cannot but applaud the noble inten¬ 
tion of the learned Syed to defend his Prophet 
against a general charge of propounding Poly¬ 
gamy, one fails to appreciate the mode of reason¬ 
ing by means of which he undertakes that difficult 
duty. A layman might well be tempted to argue: 
“If, as you say, Polygamy was contrary to the 
spirit of Islam and really opposed to the teachings 
of Mohammed, then it logically follows that Mo¬ 
hammed by taking to Polygamy acted against 
the spirit of his own religion, and by marrying 
several wives proved false to his own teachings.” 

From the above, it is evident that the first 

1 The Spirit of Islam, p. 327 and p. 365, note. 

Ibid., p. 327. 


I 


114 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

Mutazalite doctors have not advanced the cause 
of Islam much by attaching great importance to 
the word adl in the famous text and developing 
therefrom an untenable theory of Koranic laws 
inculcating monogamy. No matter what great 
importance the doctors, Mutazalite and others, 
might attach to the word adl, it is plain that 
so long as a Moslem had no fear of dealing 
“inequitably” by his several wives, he could by 
the Law of the Prophet contract marriage with 
two, or three, or four women. It was the fear 
of not being able to deal fairly and equitably 
by his several wives that kept the Moslem back 
from Polygamy, and not the realisation of the 
inherent wrong in having marital relations with 
more than one woman. And in this realisa¬ 
tion of the inherent wrong in having marital 
relations with more than one woman, and not in 
the mere abject fear of being or not being able 
to deal equitably with one’s several wives, lies the 
vast and immeasurable, the primary and essen¬ 
tial difference between the consecrating ideals of 
Monogamy and the debasing realities of Poly¬ 
gamy. As man advances in the scale of civilisation 
he conies to perceive the permanent value and 
vast potentialities of the Individual Soul, and it 
is then that he realises that the life-purpose of 
that Individual Soul, whether male or female, is 
best and most worthily fulfilled when it is mated 
to only one other of the opposite sex. 

Taking this view of the matter, it cannot be 
gainsaid that between Monogamy and Polygamy 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 115 

stretches a vast and permanent gulf which no 
prophetic sanction nor sophistical reasoning can 
possibly bridge over. It is, therefore, idle to 
explain away the plain meaning and obvious 
bearing of the Prophet’s teaching on the subject 
of plurality of wives or to justify his own several 
marriages on the plea of their being “a matter 
of charity and hard necessity,” entailing on the 
Prophet “a sacrifice of no light character.” 1 We 
might, however, clear the ground by dismissing 
without examination the Christian critic’s charges 
of sensuality and self-indulgence in connection 
with these marriages and admitting without 
demur that the Prophet was led to contract 
them from motives primarily, if not purely, 
benevolent. We might even go further and say 
that by these marriages he saved many a widow 
from starvation and worse, and taken altogether 
they entailed on him “a self-sacrifice of no mean 
order.” When we have said this, we have said 
all that could be said in defence of these mar¬ 
riages. But the gathered force of all the arguments 
that could be advanced to justify them does not 
absolve the Prophet of Islam from the principal 
ground of reproach of his Christian assailants— 
namely, that in a prophet Polygamy in every 
conceivable circumstance is abhorrent and in¬ 
admissible, and Mohammed, by practising it in 
his own person, perpetuated in Islam for all time 
an institution that was fundamentally antago¬ 
nistic to the best interests of his own people and 
1 The Spirit of Islam, p. 331. 


n6 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


the general progress of humanity at large. It 
is admitted by all that during the extended life¬ 
time of the noble Khadija, his first and only true 
partner in life, the Prophet’s home was a shrine 
of all that is most beautiful and entrancing in 
married life, and during that period his most 
captious critic could detect no flaw in his 
personal life or his moral ideals. Had he after 
her death remained faithful to her memory and 
died in the hopes of a reunion that no earthly 
mischance or temporal limitations could sever, 
what an example of conjugal love, what a legacy 
of marital fidelity would he not have left to Islam 
and the world at large! Let the Moslems think 
of that when they feel that they are in duty 
bound to uphold and justify their Prophet’s 
several marriages! 

Slavery. 

Like polygamy, Slavery has existed among all 
nations and, like it, it was an institution recog¬ 
nised by law among the Jews, the Greeks, the 
Romans, and the Germanic races ; and even 
Christianity tacitly accepted it, since it raised 
no protest against its principle nor formulated 
any rule for its suppression. On the contrary, 
finding Slavery a recognised institution of the 
Empire, it adopted the system wholesale, and 
made no effort even indirectly to check the evil by 
improving the status of slaves and thereby bring¬ 
ing about its gradual abolition. Under the Civil 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 117 

Law of the Empire, slaves were mere chattels, 
and they remained so under the Christian domi¬ 
nation. It is true that a slave became free by 
adopting monachism, but in all other respects 
Slavery was as rampant under the Christian as 
under the pagan rule. The Digest, compiled 
under a Christian emperor, fixed the price of 
slaves, made marriages between slaves illegal, 
and confirmed various rights of an inhuman and 
degrading nature possessed by the masters over 
their slaves. In fact, the Church had so far 
failed to grasp the spirit of the Saviour’s teaching 
that it held slaves for itself and recognised in 
explicit terms the lawfulness of this dehumanising 
institution. 

Slavery, therefore, flourished broadcast and 
was upheld by the most advanced system of 
laws known to the ancient world, when Moham¬ 
med appeared on the scene. His own people, it 
is true, were as much involved in it as any other ; 
but, from the very commencement of his career, 
he with his keen eye saw the innate wrong and 
basic injustice of the institution; and when he 
came to possess power among them, he exhorted 
his followers repeatedly in the name of Allah to 
enfranchise slaves—“than which there was not 
an act of life more acceptable to their Creator.’’ 
He promulgated several humane laws for the 
manumission of slaves and ruled that they should 
be allowed to purchase their liberty by the wages 
of their service and, if needs be, sums should be 
advanced to them from the public treasury for 


n8 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


that purpose. 1 The whole tenor of Mohammed’s 
teaching on the subject was to make the masters 
hold their slaves on terms of the utmost equality 
with themselves, and he went so far as to enjoin: 

“ And as to your slaves, see that ye feed them 
as ye feed yourselves, and clothe them as ye clothe 
yourselves.” 

What could be more convincing proof of the 
Prophet’s good-will and benevolent intentions to¬ 
wards his fellow-men in bondage than the above 
emphatic injunction of his to his followers? 
And yet there have been found people to say 
that " Islam consecrated slavery,” when in reality 
it strove in every way for its suppression by 
circumscribing the means of possession within 
the narrowest possible limits. The man who 
dealt in slaves was declared an outcast of human¬ 
ity, and to reduce one of the faithful to slavery 
was forbidden in explicit terms. Be it, however, 
admitted to the lasting shame of Moslem rulers 
that they have systematically flouted the letter 
and spirit of the Prophet’s commandments and 
allowed the long-discredited traffic in human 
bodies and souls to go unchecked in their domains. 
Let us hope that with the modern awakening of 
Islam the Moslems of the world will awake to 
the true intent of their great Prophet’s plain 
teaching on the subject, and save his memory 
from the aspersions cast on it by bringing moral 
pressure on their rulers to proclaim in unequivocal 
terms that Slavery is opposed to the spirit of 

1 Sura xxiv. 33. 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 119 

their faith and the lasting interests of mankind 
as a whole. 

Laws: Civil and Criminal. 

Taking first the Criminal Laws, they are enacted 
in the form of penalties for the commission of 
certain crimes. They are fragmentary in character 
and, judging from the crude nature of the punish¬ 
ments, they obviously embody the customary 
law and practice as it prevailed among the various 
tribes of Arabs then existing. For instance, a 
thief for the first offence was to lose a hand, 
while the relatives of a murdered man had the 
choice of either killing the murderer or demanding 
blood-money from him. An unchaste woman was 
to be immured alive or imprisoned for life, while 
“the whore and the whoremonger were each to 
be scourged with a hundred stripes.” 1 Warfare 
against Allah and His Apostle was looked upon 
almost as lese-majeste and punished with impale¬ 
ment or mutilation or banishment. 

The Civil Laws were still more fragmentary, 
and were enacted to meet the special require¬ 
ments of the Prophet in the management of his 
numerous followers. They were at times definite 
legal orders and at times merely moral counsels. 
For instance, he enjoined that one’s property 
was not to be expended for mere show and vain 
display, nor was it to be utilised in bribing 
witnesses or public functionaries. There were 


1 Sura xxiv. 2. 


120 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


various positive enactments issued for the 
equitable inheritance of property, and recom¬ 
mendatory regulations made as to how 
legacies were to be shared by the beneficiaries, 
and what part of them was to be left for the 
support of the poor and the orphan. The last- 
named was an object of particular care and 
protection in the Islamic Code, and special rules 
were made in its interest whereby the orphan 
was to be treated with fairness, its property was 
to be well looked after and, should it be a girl, 
suitable marriage was to be arranged for her. 
Although Mohammed commenced his career as 
a dealer in merchandise, the Koran contains no 
special rules on trade except the general one of 
dealing justly with one’s customer and taking 
no unfair advantage of one’s fellow-tradesmen. 
There is, however, a positive enactment 1 in the 
matter of Usury, from which the Faithful are 
warned on pain of hell-fire to keep away: yet, 
alas, like many other enactments of the Prophet, 
it is now “more honoured in the breach than 
in the observance.’’ 

Regulations: Domestic, Social and Cere¬ 
monial. 

As might be expected, the most important 
regulation of these is the legislation regarding 
Marriage. “The licence allowed by it between 
the sexes—at least, in favour of the male sex— 

1 Sura iv. 36. 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 121 


is so wide,” says Sir William Muir, "that for 
such as have the means and the desire to take 
advantage of it, there need be no limit whatever 
to sexual indulgence. The Koran gives the 
believer permission to have four wives at a 
time. And he may exchange them; that is, he 
may divorce them at pleasure, taking others in 
their stead. And, as if this were not licence 
enough, the divine law permits the believer to 
consort with all female slaves. These he may 
receive into his harem instead of wives, or in 
addition to them, and without any limit of 
number or restraint whatever.” 1 

In the foregoing pages we have examined at 
length the various charges frequently brought 
against Mohammed for admitting the principle 
of polygamy in his institutions of Marriage, and 
found how unfair and untenable most of them 
were; still, no Moslem will care to deny that the 
above statement of Sir William Muir is a fairly 
accurate summary, in theory at least, of the 
Islamic marriage-code as it is proclaimed in the 
Koran. The sexual freedom, conceded and 
legalised by it, is indeed such as to make Islam 
in all truth " the Easy Way.” However, there 
is one redeeming feature. And it is that most 
minute instructions are given as to how the 
various wives and their nondescript companions 
of the harem are to be treated, and what strict 
impartiality coupled with love and tenderness is 
expected of their lord and protector. Provision 
1 The Rise and Decline of Islam, p. 31. 


122 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


is made to deal with disobedient and otherwise 
unsatisfactory wives. They may be beaten and 
even confined to bring them to a happier frame 
of mind in consonance with their lord and master's 
wishes. For extreme cases talaq is provided for, 
which is an extremely easy form of divorce, 
though certain regulations are made to guard 
the interests of the divorced wife and her children. 

In the Regulations, a good deal of attention is 
given to deportment and the ordinary courtesies 
and charities of life. An all-round demand is 
made for respect, particularly to one’s parents, 
elders and betters. Strict rules are laid down for 
modest behaviour between men and women. The 
latter are enjoined to cover themselves in a certain 
mode and are not to go unveiled nor display their 
ornaments “except to their husbands or their 
fathers, or their husbands’ fathers, or their sons, 
or their husbands’ sons, or their brothers, or 
their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or 
their women, or their slaves, or male domestics 
who have no natural force, or to children who 
note not women’s nakedness.” 1 

There are quite a number of ceremonial regu¬ 
lations of a fragmentary character, chiefly adapted 
from old Arab customs and supplemented in the 
matter of forbidden foods from the Jewish Code. 
As in Leviticus, so in the Koran, foods are 
divided into clean and unclean. The terms used 
are halal and haram. The former means that 
which is permitted, and is consequently lawful 

1 Sura xxiv. 31. 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 123 

and wholesome; while the latter stands for a 
that is prohibited, and is consequently unlawful 
and noxious. The principal prohibitions are those 
of swine’s flesh and strong drink. Together with 
wine, drawing of lots by means of arrows and all 
games of chance are proclaimed hararn, and magic 
in the sense of sorcery is strongly condemned. 

There is one point in which the Koran went 
further than the Jewish and Christian scriptures 
that preceded it, inasmuch as it proclaimed that, 
in the sight of the Creator, all His creation, 
human and brute, stood on a footing of absolute 
equality. “And there is not an animal nor a 
creeping thing upon the earth, nor a feathered 
creature which flies with wings, but is a people 
like unto yourselves—which eventually like your¬ 
selves shall return unto the Lord.” Where, I ask, 
in the ancient scriptures of any race, has the 
duty of mankind towards their dumb and neg¬ 
lected fellow-creatures been proclaimed in lan¬ 
guage at once so terse and luminous, so full of 
infinite tenderness and solemn meaning as in the 
above text of the Koran? These precepts of 
tenderness and love towards all sentient creatures 
embalmed in the Koran have, alas, like other 
good things of Islam, not been translated into 
a common duty of everyday life in the Moslem 
world to the extent thay might have been. 

Warfare and Religious Tolerance. 

The Moslems, though usually described as 
having belief in one God, are yet commonly 


124 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

known to regard the followers of other religions 
as being Unbelievers and, for that reason, 
to deem “it lawful to kill them—indeed, the 
murder of an infidel is thought to be a pass¬ 
port to Paradise .” 1 To anyone who was even 
superficially acquainted with the true religion of 
Mohammed such a bare and stupid summary of 
the Prophet’s teaching on Warfare and Religious 
Tolerance will appear to be grossly misleading, 
if not wholly and absolutely wrong. And yet 
there are passages in the Koran, the mere cold 
detached reading of which would logically lead 
one to such a bald deduction. Take, for instance, 
that text from the sura on Immunity which is so 
frequently and systematically commented on by 
the critics: 

“And when the sacred months are passed, kill (liter¬ 
ally, fight in the way of God) those who join gods with 
God wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, 
besiege them, and lay wait for them with every kind 
of ambush: but if they shall convert, and observe 
prayer, and pay the obligatory alms, then let them go 
their way, for Allah is Gracious, Merciful.” 2 

Or take the other text which is equally a favourite 
of the critics: 

“The only recompense of those who war against God 
and his Apostle, and study to act corruptly on the earth, 
shall be that they shall be slain or crucified, or have 
their alternate hands and feet cut off, or be banished 
the land: this their disgrace in this world, and in the 
next a great torment shall be theirs—except those who, 

1 A. M. Pennell’s A Hero of the Afghan Frontier, p. 47. 

2 Sura ix. 5. 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 125 

ere you have them in your power, shall repent; for 
know Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.” 1 

Strangely enough, in the latter sura of The 
Table there is a verse which is full of the true 
spirit of tolerance and good-will for those who are 
not of his faith and creed. Saith the Prophet: 

“ O people of the Book! Be not ye troubled for 
the Unbelievers: verily, they who believe, and the Jews, 
and the Sabeites, and the Christians—whoever of them 
believeth in God and in the Last Day, and doth what 
is Right, on them shall come no fear, neither shall 
they be put to grief.” 2 

The same noble sentiment is repeated in dif¬ 
ferent words in a hundred other passages in the 
Koran: witness, “What, wilt thou force men to 
believe when belief can come only from Allah? 
Let there be, therefore, no compulsion in reli¬ 
gion." 3 But of these passages scattered all 
through the Koran there are two that are 
especially worth quoting, as they prove, beyond 
cavil that Islam does not confine Salvation to 
the followers of the Prophet alone, as has been 
so persistently and ignorantly maintained by 
its critics. 

“To every one of you have We given a law and a 
way: and if Allah had pleased, He had, be assured, 
made you all one people. But He hath done otherwise, 
that He might try you in that which He hath severally 
given unto you: wherefore press forward in good works. 
Unto Allah shall ye all one day return, and He will 
then tell you that concerning which ye dispute now.” 4 

1 Sura v. 38, 39. 2 Sura v. 72, 73. 

3 Sura xi. 257. 4 Sura v. 35, 56. 


126 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


“ Dispute not, therefore, unless in kindly sort, with 
the people of the Book;—save with such of them as 
have dealt wrongfully with thee: and say ye: ‘We 
believe in what hath been sent down to us and hath 
been sent down to you. Our God and your God is One, 
and to Him are we all in common pledged.” 1 

Are there to be found in the Scriptures of other 
religions texts breathing a catholicity of feeling 
deeper or propagating a tolerance of beliefs 
nobler than the above two? 

It is, however, true that the Prophet preached 
— Jihadan-fi-sabillah. Various and contradictory 
interpretations have been put on this fateful 
expression. Some, like Koelle and Kremer, have 
taken it to mean, as if it preached slaughter, 
rapine, and destruction for the sake of Allah and 
Islam: while others, like Maulana Cheragh Ali 
and Mirza Abul-Fazl, see in it nothing but a 
harmless exhortation—“to strive, labour, toil and 
exert oneself” in the way of Allah. Now the 
famous expression is neither so bloodthirsty nor 
so bloodless as these good and learned men 
severally make it out to be. Rightly and impar¬ 
tially interpreted, it means to strive, struggle and 
strike in the Way of Allah. Much, therefore, 
depends on the right interpretation of the 
phrase, “in the Way of Allah.” What is “the 
Way of Allah”? Fortunately there are several 
passages in the Koran which, taken together, 
provide us with a fairly complete answer to 
this important query. 

1 Sura xxix. 45. 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 127 

“Fight in the way of Allah: that is, against those 
who make war against you. But do not attack them 
first, for Allah loves not the aggressor. . . . Fight, 
therefore, against them until there be no more civil 
discord, and the only worship be that of God: but 
if they desist, then let there be no hostility, save against 
the wicked.” 1 

“O ye who believe: Know that Retaliation is en¬ 
joined upon you in the matter of the slain. . . . But 
in this Law of Retaliation is your true security for life, 
O men of understanding! to the intent that ye may 
fear Allah and guard against evil. . . . Were it other¬ 
wise, and if Allah had not made this law of repelling 
some men by others, the world would have gone to bad¬ 
ness: but Allah is a Lord of Kindness to Creation.” 2 

“ Why should you not then fight in the Way of God, 
for the weak among men and for women and for children 
—those who say: O Lord, take us out of this city 
whose people are oppressors” ? 

“Fighting, therefore, is enjoined upon you, and it is 
assuredly a hateful thing to you. But it may be that 
you hate a thing which is good for you; and it may 
also be that you love a thing which is bad for you. 
Be assured, God knows what is best for you, and you 
do not know.” 

From the above passages it is evident that it 
is the duty of every able-bodied Moslem to fight, 
if need arises, in the Way of Allah—that is, in 
self-defence or on behalf of the weak and the 
oppressed, or for the redress of wrongs or the 
enforcement of covenants. Let it not be forgotten 
besides, that to the Moslems self-defence had 
become a question of self-preservation. Sur¬ 
rounded by enemies and traitors, Mohammed 

1 Sura ii. 186, 189. 2 Sura ii. 173, 175. 


128 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


with his followers would have inevitably perished 
but for the swords in their hands. They had, 
therefore, either to submit to be slaughtered or 
fight when they were attacked. Of the two, 
Mohammed chose the latter alternative, but he 
made it very clear to his followers that they 
were to draw their swords and defend themselves 
only "when the Infidels broke their oaths of 
alliance and attacked them.” Nay more, he 
even went further and made the following stirring 
appeal to their better mind and nobler nature: 

"If ye make reprisals, then make them to the same 
extent that ye were injured: but if ye can endure 
patiently, best will it be for the patiently enduring. 
Endure then with patience. But thy patient endurance 
must be sought in none but God. And be not grieved 
about the Infidels, nor be troubled at their devices: 
but follow thou the Way of thy Lord with wisdom and 
with kindly warning, and dispute with the Infidels in 
the kindliest manner. For God knoweth best those who 
stray from His way and those who have yielded to His 
guidance; and God, be assured, is with those who fear 
Him and do good works.” 1 

This noble appeal of the Prophet for greater 
patience and kindlier ways towards the Un¬ 
believers, and his proclaimed Tolerance of all 
creeds and Charity towards all men, have been 
skilfully slurred over by the interested zeal of 
rival religionists or, worse still, utterly perverted 
by the insane bigotry and dynastic cupidity 
of his own venal followers. 


1 Sura xvi. 126-128. 


THE SHARIAT OF MOHAMMED 129 


Human Brotherhood. 

However much Islam may have been per¬ 
verted by the bigotry and cupidity of its own 
followers in the matter of jihddan-fi-sabillah, or 
misunderstood by the interested zeal of rival 
religionists in the matter of religious tolerance, 
it cannot be gainsaid that within his own fold 
Mohammed was the first to practise, as he was 
undoubtedly the first to grasp, the true intent 
and spirit of Christ’s great teaching about the 
equality of man in the sight of God. "Ye People 
of the Lord, hearken unto my words,” said the 
Prophet in that last great sermon of his, every 
word of which has burnt into the soul of Islam 
ever since the prophetic lips gave utterance to 
it; "for I know not whether after this year I shall 
ever be amongst you here again. Know that 
every Moslem is the brother of every other 
Moslem. All of you are equal in the eye of heaven. 
For ye are but the pre-ordained units of one vast 
ever-living Brotherhood!” It was on this grand 
note of the Brotherhood of Islam that the Prophet 
closed his sermon, completed his message, and 
ended his mission to mankind. For to him all 
distinctions of race or colour, all divisions, social 
or religious, were utterly abhorrent. Conse¬ 
quently, throughout his chequered life, he mixed 
freely and lived in happy harmony with all with¬ 
out reserve or constraint of any kind, whether 
in the field or the guest-chamber, in the tent or 
the castle, in the mosque or the market-place. 

K 


130 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


Likewise all who worthily bear his name and truly 
profess his faith ought to follow and do follow 
his great example and mix freely and live in 
happy harmony with all and sundry, irrespective 
of their rank and wealth. The first Muezzin of 
Islam was an Ethiopian slave, called Bilal, and 
likewise the first king of Delhi and the founder 
of the Islamic Empire in India was a Persian slave, 
by name Kutbuddin. These instances manifest 
the true democratic spirit that lies at the core 
of Islam—a spirit which will have to be jealously 
guarded and sedulously nurtured if the Future 
of Islam is to reflect some of the Glories of its Past. 


THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 


“To-morrow, perhaps that world, to-day so careless and 
incredulous, will believe in you and listen to you with avidity. 
Onward, therefore, in faith, and fear not! That which 
Mohammed did, Mohammedans surely can do. Believe and 
act. Action is the word of Allah: passive thought is but 
its shadow.’’ 


After Mazzini. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 

The reader who has gone through the foregoing 
seven chapters without prejudice and preposses¬ 
sions cannot have failed to notice that, taken 
all in all, nothing could be simpler or more in 
keeping with the swelling tide of human thought 
than the teachings of the Arabian Prophet. In 
them no theory is propounded to imprison the 
mind of man, nor any law promulgated to keep 
enchained the conscience of advancing humanity. 
The few legal principles the Prophet enunciated 
and the fewer rules of religious practice he en¬ 
joined were designed chiefly to correct patent 
evils and maintain discipline and uniformity, so 
necessary at all stages of social and religious 
progress. But neither the rules nor the principles 
were ever rigidly applied, nor were they by any 
means of an inflexible character. On the con¬ 
trary, the ease with which Islamic precepts and 
principles could mould themselves to the varying 
requirements of different countries and nations 
was the outstanding feature of the early history 
of Islam and the real cause of its phenomenal 
growth in those centuries. But this wonderful 
adaptability of Islam, alas, carried within it the 
seed of its own undoing. For those precepts and 

J 33 


134 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

principles that so readily lent themselves to re¬ 
adjustment to meet local conditions, once they 
had been re-adjusted, soon got encrusted 
with inane formulas, and in the course of time 
became so fossilised that they ultimately came to 
possess only local and historic significance. It is 
because some of the Christian writers on Islam 
have failed to grasp this turn of events in Moslem 
History that they complain of “the harshness 
and inadaptability of Islam to present modes of 
thought and manners.” But a little patient 
inquiry into the historic value of laws and pre¬ 
cepts, a little more fairness in the examination 
of undisputed facts and traditions, would evince 
the temporary and local character of such tenets 
and precepts as are incapable of being harmonised 
with the requirements or the sentiments or even 
the prejudices of our own times. 

In the first place, it must be remembered 
that our relations with our Creator are primarily 
matters of conscience, as our relations with our 
fellow-men are necessarily matters of positive 
rules. And what higher sanction could be found 
for the enforcement of the relative duties of 
man to man than the sanction of religion? And 
religion in the East, as we said before, is not a 
matter of hebdomadal flocking into churches and 
chapels, nor a subject of solemn declamation by 
paid preachers. It is there—the Rule of Life: 
and of all rules the most exacting and the least 
accommodative. Religion worthy of the name 
ought to act rather as an impelling force than a 


THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 


135 


compelling necessity, thereby leading humanity 
by a secret under-current to that state of per¬ 
fection and self-realisation which is the end of 
existence. And it has been admitted even by 
its Christian expounders that Islam being an 
eclectic religion, its distinguishing feature is that 
it has imbibed from all ethnic and catholic reli¬ 
gions just such broad and lasting characteristics 
as are based on reason and the moral intuition 
of man. 1 

Coming to the more practical side of Islam, 
we find that the Prophet denounced in no un¬ 
certain terms all manner of impurity, every form 
of hypocrisy and each aspect of ungodliness, and 
in a thousand varied ways proclaimed the value 
of truth, the need of charity and the preciousness 
of brotherly love. “How do you suppose," he 
questioned a disciple of his, “God will know you 
when you approach Him ? By your love of your 
children, of your kin, of your neighbours, and of 
your fellow-creatures." It is this practical charac¬ 
ter of the religion of Mohammed that has such 
an abiding influence on the common relations 
of mankind. In “the trivial round and common 
task" of daily life, we do not go to exceptional 
minds to appraise the value of a religion. We 
search rather among the masses to understand 
its true character. And the questions we put 
about a religion are: What power does it wield 
over them? Does it give them a clear guidance 
in the matter of right and wrong? Does it lift 
1 Clarke’s Ten Great Religions, ch. i. 


136 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

them out of the mire of indolence and despon¬ 
dency in which all over the world it is the common 
fate of the masses to sink? The Islamic regions 
of the Old World with their 250,000,000 followers 
furnish the best answer to these varied queries. 
That it did not ignore human nature in all its 
multifarious phases nor entangle itself in the 
tortuous by-ways outside the realms of the actual 
and the practical, is sufficiently evidenced by 
the appeal it makes alike to the untutored Negro 
and the cultured Turk, to the simple-minded 
South Sea Islander and the subtle and highly 
sensitive Persian. 

Yet, alas for the latter-day professors of Islam, 
this grand old religion of Mohammed has of more 
recent times fallen on evil days. As in the 
Christian lands, so also in the Islamic, the prac¬ 
tice of religion has given place to the mockery of 
profession, lazy literalism has usurped the func¬ 
tions of faithful work and empty ceremonialism 
has assumed the garb of a devotional spirit. 
And to cap it all, the blight of Patristicism has 
secretly crept in and ruined the blossom of 
true religion. 

With great force has a well-known Christian 
scholar pointed out the distinction between reli¬ 
gion and theology, and the evils which overtook 
the Christian Church when it confused the two and 
allowed the latter to supplant the former. 1 The 
same has happened in Islam. The mixing up of 
dead theology with living religion has exter- 
1 Prof. Momerie in his Defects of Modern Christianity . 


THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 


137 


minated enthusiasm and earnestness among the 
Islamic masses, and their beautiful old pure- 
hearted devotion to Allah and His Prophet is 
now for all practical purposes reduced to mere 
interested worship of the Pir and his Idgah. 
Perhaps, when I say this, I am putting the 
matter too strongly, but not, I think, much too 
strongly. Anyhow, it will not be denied that the 
lives and conduct of a large number of Moslems 
at the present day are governed not so much by 
the precepts of the Prophet or the teachings of 
the Koran as by the opinions of their imams and 
mujtahids and the theories evolved from the long 
string of hadith (traditions), ijma (consensus of 
opinion), and qiyds (inference by analogy). These 
hadith, ijma and qiyas and those imams and 
mujtahids, I dare say, have their proper place and 
uses in the Islamic scheme of things. But when 
the latter dare "to sit in Moses’ seat" and the 
former threaten to replace "the Kitab divine," 
it is then that they become a danger and a curse 
to Islam. Like the Christian ecclesiastics of old, 
many of these imams and mujtahids were the 
vassals and dependents of despotic rulers whose 
demands were of first consideration with them, 
and when these demands of the despots could 
not be made to fit in with the precepts of the 
Prophet — why, so much the worse for the 
precepts! Canons were straightway invented, 
theories gaily started, traditions secretly dis¬ 
covered and interpretations boldly put upon the 
Prophet’s words utterly subversive of their true 


138 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


intent. And hence it is that many of the rules 
and regulations which now govern the conscience 
and impulse of the many professors of Islam 
hardly find an echo in the express and positive 
declarations in the Koran, and are for the most 
part the relics of the lego-religious books with 
which the Islamic world was flooded in the later 
centuries. An English writer puts the whole 
matter in a nutshell when he says: “Just as 
the Hebrews deposed their Pentateuch in favour 
of the Talmud, so the Moslems have abolished the 
Koran in favour of the Traditions and Decisions 
of the Learned.” 

The result of all this misadventure is that the 
Moslems of the present day, instead of taking 
to the narrow and difficult path indicated by the 
Prophet, of “right-doing and right-thinking,” and 
“of striving to excel in good works and seeking 
to please the Lord,” have allowed themselves to 
stray into the easy by - ways of rank oppor¬ 
tunism and outward observance or, worse still, 
into the blind alleys of doing nothing and think¬ 
ing nothing. It was but natural that the early 
disciples, oblivious of the world-wide bearing of 
the Master’s teachings, should mix up the tem¬ 
porary with the permanent, the particular with 
the universal, and that in their great admiration 
and enthusiasm for him should stereotype his 
ordinary mode of life, crystallise the passing in¬ 
cidents of a chequered career and hug to their 
hearts rules and regulations enunciated to meet 
the exigencies of the day in an infant society. 


THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 


139 


All this was but natural and to be expected. 
But for the Moslems to maintain for that reason 
that their great teacher—the man who had pro¬ 
claimed that the universe was governed by law 
and that the law of the universe was progressive 
development—ever contemplated that those in¬ 
junctions called forth by the passing necessities 
of a desert-bound people should be immutable to 
the end of Time and prove valid to the ends of 
the earth—to maintain this is to betray a de¬ 
plorable misunderstanding of the Prophet and of 
the cause he had come to advance in the world. 
The Master with his prophetic vision clearly fore¬ 
saw the danger that lay ahead of his teaching, 
and so foretold that a time would come when 
the temporary and the accidental regulations 
would have to be differentiated from the per¬ 
manent and the general. “ Ye are in an age/’ he 
warned them, “in which if ye abandon one-tenth 
of what is enjoined, ye will be ruined. After 
this, a time will come when he who shall observe 
but one-tenth of what is now commanded will 
be redeemed and blessed.’' But it was in the 
famous case of Muaz that the Prophet unmis¬ 
takably showed how alive he was to the manifold 
necessities of the world at large, with its ever- 
changing social conditions and moral ideals, and 
to the likelihood that the revelations vouchsafed 
to him might not meet all possible contingencies 
in all climes and in every age. When on the eve 
of his departure to take up the governorship 
of Yemen, Muaz came to bid good-bye to the 



140 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

Prophet, the latter asked: “Tell me, Muaz, by 
what rule or principle would you be guided in 
your administration of Yemen.” “By the Law 
of the Koran, Sire,” replied Muaz. “But what 
if in a difficult situation you found no 
direction in the Revelations?” “In that case,” 
answered Muaz, “I will act according to the 
example of my Prophet.” “But what if that 
again fails you?” “I do trust, Sire, such a con¬ 
tingency will never arise,” said Muaz, “but if it 
does, well, I will exercise my own judgment.” 
The Prophet, it is said, was much impressed by 
this answer of his disciple, which he thereupon 
commended to all his followers. 

Those last six words of Muaz might well be 
carved in letters of gold on the entrance arch¬ 
way of every mosque in Islam! There they 
would stand to remind the Moslem, every time 
he entered the consecrated grounds, of the sacred 
duty he owed to Allah and the Prophet. It is 
because the modern Moslem has long neglected 
to perform this sacred duty of exercising his 
right of Private Judgment that the present stag¬ 
nation of the Mussulman communities all over 
the world might largely be attributed. And 
unless he takes his courage in both hands and 
refuses to let his conscience and intelligence lie 
under the yoke of the early Legists and of the 
later Schoolmen with their baleful creed—namely, 
that private opinion in matters of religion is 
sinful in itself, and that a faithful follower of 
the Prophet must of necessity belong to one or the 


THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 


141 

other of the Schools established by them ten 
centuries ago—there is not much hope that the 
Future of Islam will shine forth in any degree 
commensurate with its great past. 

A well-known critic and author, 1 reviewing a 
recently published work 2 on Islam, remarks: 
“The significant and, indeed, immensely preg¬ 
nant fact to-day is the Reformation of Islam.” 
He then traces its general likeness to the Pro¬ 
testant Reformation and, noticing a certain corre¬ 
spondence between the Christian sect of Hussites 
and the Islamic tribe of Wahabites, comes to 
the conclusion that the Wahabism which inspired 
the Babism of Persia and paved the way for that 
veiled but powerful Senussi fraternity of North 
Africa, was a movement strictly analogous to 
the Puritan movement of the Middle Ages, with 
its devotion to primitive faith, strict morality and 
iconoclastic attitude towards Art. 

It is true that, broadly speaking, the evolution 
of Christianity and that of Islam have, at an 
interval of some six centuries, run a remarkably 
parallel course. But I doubt if that mere broad 
parallelism of development would justify us 
in saying that “the pregnant fact of Islam of 
to-day is the Reformation of Islam,” or in tracing 
the germs of that Reformation in Wahabite and 
analogous movements. For one thing the germ 
of the Protestant Reformation lay not so much 
in the reforming zeal of the Hussites nor in the 

1 Havelock Ellis. 

2 Lothrop Stoddard’s New World of Islam. 


142 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

puritanical frenzy of the Lollards, as in the re¬ 
covery of Classical learning and the consequent 
Revival of Literature and Art in Europe. It was 
the Renaissance that, really speaking, blazed the 
path and laid the foundation of the Reformation. 

Since the eruption of the Barbarian tribes into 
the Roman provinces, no change had come to 
pass in Europe at all comparable to that which 
followed the diffusion of the New Learning in 
the latter half of the fifteenth century. En¬ 
chanted by the beauty and grace of the Classical 
models of art and poetry, more particularly those 
of the Greeks, men came to regard with aversion 
and contempt all that had been done or produced 
from the days of Trajan to those of Pope Nicho¬ 
las V. From all that was old and solemn or that 
seemed to savour of feudalism and monkery, 
people turned away with positive revulsion. They 
were content to gratify their tastes and their 
senses, caring little for worship, less for doctrine. 
Their ideas and ambitions were no longer such 
as had made their forefathers crusaders and 
ascetics, nor was their imagination possessed 
by hopes and sentiments which had inspired the 
genius of Dante. Not that they revolted against 
the Church, but they had no enthusiasm for her, 
for their enthusiasm was wholly absorbed by 
whatever was fresh and graceful, intelligible 
and reasonable. Whether we call this spirit 
analytical or sceptical, rationalistic or individu¬ 
alistic, it was the Spirit of the Renaissance and 
it was the spirit which ushered in the Reforma- 


THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 


143 


tion. For instance, the Renaissance proclaimed 
in general terms the principle of Individuality, 
and the Reformation only confirmed it when it 
itself put forth the doctrine of Private Judgment 
in matters spiritual. It maintained that the 
individual spirit, though it never ceased to mirror 
itself in the World-Spirit, had nevertheless an 
independent existence of itself as a centre of 
self-issuing forces. Consequently, Truth, religious 
or otherwise, was no longer truth to the soul until it 
was by the soul recognised, and in some measure 
even re-created. The Reformation was, therefore, 
in one sense and in a deep sense the pure out¬ 
come of forces liberated by the Renaissance, 
without which it could only have ended in a mere 
re-examination and re-adjustment of the old 
ecclesiastical machinery and not in a complete 
re-forming and re-creation of it as had actually 
been the case. If we are, therefore, to derive one 
sure lesson from the remarkable parallelism which 
Mr. Havelock Ellis traces between the evolution 
of Christianity and that of Islam, it would be 
that there could be no Islamic Reformation, in the 
full and real sense of the term, unless its path was 
blazed by the torch of an Islamic Renaissance. 

And Islam ought to find no difficulty in blazing 
such a path. For its Prophet’s devotion to know¬ 
ledge and science was the feature that most 
distinguished him from all other teachers. Know¬ 
ledge was almost a passion with him. He would 
often say that “the ink of the scholar was more 
than the blood of the martyr,’’ and that “one 


144 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 

hour’s meditation on the work of the Creator 
was better than seventy years of prayer”; and 
he repeatedly impressed upon his disciples the 
necessity of seeking for knowledge “even unto 
China.” Science and Literature possessed no 
votary among the pre-Islamite Arabs at all com¬ 
parable to the Prophet. It was this passion and 
enthusiasm of his that gave a new impulse to 
the awakened energies of the race and sowed the 
seeds of a plant of learning which was eventually 
to blossom forth into the world-renowned uni¬ 
versities of Bagdad and Salerno, Cairo and Cor¬ 
dova. Speaking of the last-named a famous 
French author is led to remark: 

“The taste for science and literature had by the 
tenth century established in this privileged corner of 
the world, a toleration of which modern times hardly 
offer us an example. Christians, Jews, and Mussulmans 
spoke in the same tongue, sang the same songs, parti¬ 
cipated in the same literary and scientific studies. All 
the barriers which separated the various peoples were 
effaced: all worked with one aim and one object for 
the furtherance of a common civilisation and common 
culture. The mosques of Cordova, where the students 
could be counted by thousands, became the active centres 
of philosophical and scientific studies.” 1 

What more impartial testimony could be cited 
to demonstrate the breadth of outlook and 
nobility of aim of the Islamic mind, what more 
weighty evidence adduced to prove how pro¬ 
foundly she had at heart and how disinterestedly 
she pursued the cause of Culture and Civilisation 

1 Renan’s Averroes et I’Averroisme, p. 4. 


THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 


145 


than this splendid avowal of Renan? And Cor¬ 
dova was by no means an isolated instance, but 
the type and pattern of the wonderful spirit 
which in her palmy days animated Islam through¬ 
out her widely-extended domain. And the world 
still possesses and closely guards the marvellous 
fruit of her imagination in those immortal Tales 
of Arabian Nights, of her philosophy in the 
sublime speculations of Hafiz and Omar Khay¬ 
yam, of her poetic fervour in the incomparable 
epic of Firdoushi, and of her artistic genius in 
that flower and crown of human architecture, the 
peerless Taj Mahal of Agra. It may be, alas, 
that Islam is not destined to outrival these match¬ 
less products of her own genius! But no destiny 
whatever can prevent her from living up to them 
save her own inertia and want of ambition. And 
one sure way of living up to her immortal past 
is to bring about the Revival of her Ancient 
Culture and Learning. 

There is another point the sons of Islam will 
have particularly to bear in mind if they wish 
to get out of her all the good that is in her and 
maintain whatever prestige and influence she still 
possesses in the world at large. And the point 
is that they must not take fright at their own 
shadows, but must unflinchingly stand by their 
creed, nor fall a ready victim to the common 
temptation of reading their wishes about Islam 
into the facts of Islam. Of the former the word 
Islam itself is a significant instance. In Chap¬ 
ter III. we have spoken at great length to 

L 


146 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


demonstrate how its leading exponents jib at ac¬ 
cepting the full contents of the word, and how 
even a recognised authority like Syed Ameer Ali, 
fearing the logical sequence of the full import and 
bearing of the term, unworthily attempts to ex¬ 
plain it away in a half-assertive, half-apologetic 
vein. The same great authority again furnishes 
an example of a notable Moslem yielding to the 
common temptation of reading one’s wishes about 
Islam into the facts of Islam. As we noticed in 
the foregoing chapter, Mr. Ameer Ali, discussing 
the question of polygamy, observes that poly¬ 
gamy is opposed to the teaching of Mohammed, 
and that for his own part he looks upon it in the 
present phase of things as an adulterous con¬ 
nection and as contrary to the spirit of Islam. 1 
If this were so, what opinion are we to have of 
a prophet who barefacedly takes to polygamy, 
contrary to the spirit of his own faith ? Of what 
worth is the teaching when the teacher himself 
openly flouts his own teaching? What a pass 
we bring matters to when we thus thoughtlessly 
try to read our wishes into facts! And how 
needlessly we lower the great name and high 
character of the Prophet when to meet our own 
whims we stupidly seek to thrust upon him ideas 
and principles he never possessed, never professed 
and never propounded! 

There is yet another temptation into which the 
sons of Islam are very apt to fall. In their 
great love and veneration for the Prophet, they 
1 The Spirit of Islam, pp. 327, 365. 


THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 


147 


deem it their solemn duty to extol his character 
and exalt his personality to the full measure 
of their capacity for praise and command of 
language. In their great enthusiasm for their 
Prophet, which is both natural and laudable, 
they are often carried away beyond the bounds 
of reason and facts, with the inevitable con¬ 
sequence that those outside the fold are left 
as unimpressed as unconvinced, while those in¬ 
side the fold are apt to take too readily to the 
congenial task of basking in the reflected glory of 
their master. On this point, the great betrayers of 
Islam, unfortunately, are those great expounders 
of her from whom the greatest sanity and im¬ 
partiality of judgment might justly have been 
expected. Witness the following from The Spirit 
of Islam : 

“The greatest Reformer the world has ever pro¬ 
duced was Mohammed. . . . The greatest upholder of 
the sovereignty of Reason was Mohammed. . . . The 
work of Jesus was left unfinished. It was reserved for 
Mohammed to systematise the laws of morality. . . . 
In the fact of the whole work being achieved in his own 
lifetime lies the distinctive superiority of Mohammed 
over the prophets, sages, and philosophers of other times 
and other countries. Jesus, Moses, Zoroaster, Sakya- 
Muni, Plato, all had their notions of realms of God, 
their republics, their ideas, through which degraded 
humanity was to be elevated into a new moral life: all 
had departed from this world with their aspirations 
unfulfilled, their bright visions unrealised; or had be¬ 
queathed the task of elevating their fellow-men to 
sanguinary disciples or monarch-pupils. It was reserved 
for Mohammed to fulfil his mission, and that of his 
predecessors. ... So ended a life consecrated, from 


148 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


first to last, to the service of God and humanity. Is 
there another to be compared to this, with all its trials 
and temptations ? Is there another which has stood the 
fire of the world, and came out so unscathed?” 1 

Why make these brave interrogations? Why 
issue this unnecessary challenge? How does it 
add to the fame of Mohammed or advance the 
cause of Islam ? Such uncalled - for challenges 
and odious comparisons only provoke those out¬ 
side the Islamic fold to pick holes in the Prophet’s 
character and creed. Forster, for instance, in his 
book 2 calls Mohammedanism “a false and spu¬ 
rious revelation,” and “a baleful superstition,” 
and its author "an impostor, earthly, sensual, 
devilish beyond even the licence of his own 
licentious creed.” 

Such rank abuse and mutual recriminations 
are utterly unworthy and wholly inexcusable, 
especially at the present juncture of events when, 
in some of the most populous parts of the world, 
the Moslem and the Christian have to live side 
by side and together work out their common 
destiny. It is a time essentially for mutual 
tolerance of each other’s diverging aims and 
sympathetic interest in each other’s common 
pursuits, and not for needless embitterment of 
religious feelings and belittling of each other’s 
prophets. There is nothing in the world so wrong 
but that the spirit of humanity, which is as much 
the spirit of Christ as of Mohammed, may make 

1 Pages 211, 219, 285. 

2 Mohammedanism Unveiled. 


THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 


149 


it, if not right, at least possible to be borne 
without too much bitterness of heart. But if 
such a spirit is to be cultivated in Islam, its 
exponents and expounders will have of set pur¬ 
pose to keep clear of all temptations of claiming 
a kind of “ superiority ” for their Prophet by 
making provocative and unconvincing compari¬ 
sons with his past compeers. Such methods are 
not very helpful nor are they conducive to giving 
real eminence to a man, much less to a prophet. 
A prophet, like any other man, if he is really 
great, must be great in his own self and in his 
own sphere of work, and stands in no need of 
fictitious and biased comparisons with others and 
their work to be counted great. And Mohammed 
was great in his own self and in his own sphere 
of work. And so were the other Prophets. The 
Prophets, be it remembered, are the products of 
the spiritual necessities of their age, and are no 
mere accidents, nor are their lives unconnected 
episodes in the history of the world. Each of 
them, consequently, stood supreme in the par¬ 
ticular period of time which he was sent down to 
reclaim and enlighten, guide and set a standard 
to. And each without exception fulfilled his 
mission just as well as Mohammed did, and like 
him completed his earthly task as fully as it was 
possible for him to do within the immediate 
limitations and despite the insuperable obstacles 
which hedged in his destiny. This is the only 
legitimate conclusion we can come to from taking 
an unbiased and comprehensive view of things 


150 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


and reading the life-history of each of these great 
souls with an open mind and a more discerning 
eye. Let the Moslems, therefore, once for all 
give up the foolish notion which overweening 
conceit and easy complacency have so long bred 
in them—namely, of believing that all other 
Prophets had left their work uncompleted and 
their missions unfulfilled, and “it was reserved 
for Mohammed to fulfil not only his own mission, 
but that of his predecessors.’’ 1 

The Present is the seed-time of the Future. 
Vast forces, religious and otherwise, have been 
unchained by the late War in all Islamic lands. 
These forces, if quickly harnessed, carefully con¬ 
served, and appropriately utilised, might change 
the whole Future of Islam. In the Khalifate 
they have one such transmuting force which, if 
used honestly and temperately, might work as 
a potent lever to lift Islam from its present inert 
and infructuous recumbency of centuries to the 
sunlit heights of a redeeming future. But it will 
have to be worked up, as we said above, honestly 
and temperately, if it is to bear fruit and not be 
discredited by the world at large. The Khalifate 
is a great cause and a splendid rallying-point, 
but no impartial exponent of Islam can wink at 
the fact that it is not and never has been a vital 
point in the religion of Mohammed. This fact 
must be boldly and squarely faced, if the great 
cause is not to degenerate into a mere vapid cry 
giving vent to long-suppressed religious fana- 
1 The Spirit of Islam, p. 211. 


THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 


151 

ticism and racial hatred. With vast numbers 
of Mussulmans it is no doubt an acknowledged 
item of Islamic Creed, but it is not in itself a 
vital point of Mohammedanism. What I mean 
is that no Mussulman can be a good Moslem 
and a worthy disciple of Mohammed who does 
not believe, for instance, in daily Prayers or the 
Prophets, in the Ramazan Fast or the Last Judg¬ 
ment, but any Mussulman could be a good Moslem 
and a worthy disciple of the Prophet quite irre¬ 
spective of his belief or disbelief in the Khalifate, 
as millions of Shiahs in Persia and elsewhere are. 
The great thing, therefore, is to see that we do not 
mix up the vital things of Islam with the non- 
vital, and while standing fast by the former in 
all circumstances whatever, leave a broad margin 
in the case of the latter and make it largely a 
question of choice and temperament. Moreover, 
we shall have to search out by a diligent and 
deliberate effort of meditative thought the basic 
qualities of Islam and hold fast to them when 
once found. Take, for instance, those qualities 
of Simplicity and Directness which were such 
distinguishing features of Islam at the commence¬ 
ment and to which she primarily owes the won¬ 
derful hold she has in after times retained on the 
heart and imagination of the countless millions 
of her followers all over the world. The introduc¬ 
tion of the slightest complexity in the Prophet's 
conception of God and His ways, or the tolerance 
of the minutest deflection from the direct and 
immediate approach to that conception, would 


152 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


inevitably undermine and eventually kill both 
the letter and spirit of Islam. 

But there is another reason besides why Sim¬ 
plicity and Directness must be the watchwords 
of Islam. Mohammed, it must be remembered, 
was the first of the Prophets to bring religion 
mainly within the bounds of Reason and Com- 
monsense. As such he abhorred all attempts at 
mysticism, disclaimed every power of wonder¬ 
working, and left nothing unsaid or undone that 
would redeem common humanity from its be¬ 
setting sins of blind credulity and lazy gullibility. 
And there are no more formidable foes of mysti¬ 
cism and human credulity than Simplicity and 
Directness. These, consequently, will have to be 
sedulously cultivated if the Islam of the Future 
is to bear aloft the torch of Reason and walk 
along the path of Commonsense indicated by its 
great Founder. 

But above all, the secret of the astonishing 
success of the Medina Mission lay in the note it 
struck in the heart of man. It was the old, old 
note—the Human Note. And it is a note which 
never palls and never fails of its purpose, no 
matter how frequently or how insistently it is 
struck. On the contrary, the more frequently and 
insistently it is struck, the deeper it sinks and the 
longer it lives in our being. And it is the dominant 
note in Islam. This is as it should be. For from 
first to last Mohammed’s life is purely and in¬ 
tensely human, and Islam in consequence is in 
this as in everything else but a pure reflex of its 


THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 


153 


great exemplar and originator. Not that other 
religions before Islam, when laying down pre¬ 
cepts and inculcating duties, ignored human 
nature, but they did not seem to take as suffi¬ 
ciently into their calculations its irrepressible 
force nor make as sufficient an allowance for its 
many needs and wide limitations as Islam did. 
Consequently, while Islam set up ideals and 
preached moral principles that were humanly 
attainable, and made for a goal that was well 
within the reach of its faithful followers, other 
religions aimed at ideals and upheld moral prin¬ 
ciples that were frankly unrealisable, as they set 
up a goal which receded the further, the nearer 
their adherents advanced towards it. Their motto 
was —“Ad Astra,” Islam’s —“Ad Rem” In other 
words, with those—the glory of life lay not in 
what it achieved, but in what it aspired to: 
with Islam—the glory of life lies not in what it 
futilely aspires to, but in what it actually achieves. 
There is, therefore, a clear and marked distinction 
between a religion of the restrictedly humanistic 
kind, with frankly mundane ideals, and a religion 
which aims at heights humanly unattainable and 
glories in the preservation and triumph of the 
Spirit Life—between a religion, for instance, like 
Islam which supports man in his narrow finite 
outlook and promises permanent happiness to 
him without enacting or even expecting any 
radical change in his nature, and a religion like 
Christianity which offers a unique revelation and 
a totally new valuation of man’s spiritual life, and 


154 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


aims at radically changing his whole nature. It 
would be idle to say this religion is right and that 
religion is wrong, or to speak of the “ superiority ” 
of the one side over the other, as most of the 
Christian and Moslem writers have been doing 
since the birth of Islam. Taking a comprehensive 
view of the matter, we might make a broad 
statement that each has what the other has not, 
as each completes and is completed by the other: 
and the use and advancement of both depends 
on each side primarily keeping true to its own 
ideals, and then giving the utmost possible lati¬ 
tude to the opposite side for the fulfilment of 
its own ideals in its own way. 

Be this as it may, the Future of Islam is bright, 
though passing clouds may for the time being 
cast gloomy shadows athwart the fair prospect. 
The Prophet who could evoke the heroic devo¬ 
tion of Ali, the unsurpassed purity of Fatima, 
the staunch fidelity of Hossain, the patience and 
piety of Musa, and the ineffable meekness of 
Jafar the Sadik, surely had a personality which 
could inspire every type of heroic manhood: and 
the religion which could produce men like Akbar, 
Avicenna and Alhazen, Ibn-Sina and Ibn-Khal- 
dun, Hafiz and Jellaluddin Rumi, Harun-al- 
Raschild and Mustapha Kemal Pasha, assuredly 
contains within itself every element of hopeful¬ 
ness! The Moslems of the world are the rightful 
heirs of this galaxy of masterful minds and 
faithful hearts. If they would but draw in¬ 
spiration from these immortal spirits, and grasp 


THE FUTURE OF ISLAM 


155 


the full significance of the great inheritance they 
have derived from them, they would not only 
ensure the Future of Islam but help to spread 
the Message that was delivered to a soul-sick 
seeker after divine knowledge on the star-lit 
heights of Mount Hira thirteen centuries ago— 
that great Message of the Desert— 


The Message of Mohammed. 








INDEX 


Aaron, 71 
Abraham, 6, 71 
Abrogated Verses, 36 
Abu Bakr, 69 
Abu’l Kasim, 13, 14 
Abu Talib, 9, 25, 101 
Adam, 6, 71, 72 
Aisop, 71 
Ahriman, 29 
Ahuramazda, 29 
Akbar, 154 

Al-Akabah, the pledge of, 28, 29 

A l-A min, 9 

Alexander, 71 

Ali, Caliph, 31, 108, 154 

Alhazen, 154 

Allah, derivation of, discussed, 31 
Allah-katib, 4 7 
Allah-kereen, 47 

Almsgiving, Islamic theory of, 
90, 91 

Ameer Ali, the Rt. Hon., 45, 46, 
112, 113, 114, 146 
Angels, Islamic theory of, 64-66 
Aquinas, 43 
Arabia, described, 3, 4 
Arnold, E. V., vi, 40 
Ar-Rahim, 34 
Ar-Rahman, 34 
Asma's-sifat, 34 
Assyrians, no 
Augustine, 43 

Averroes et VAverro'isme, Renan’s, 
144 

Avestas, 29, 57 
Avicenna, 154 

Babism, 141 

Babylonian Captivity, 57 

Bacon, Francis, 43 

Badr, the battle of, 52 

Bagdad, 144 

Balaam, 71 

Bilal, 27 

Bostra, 9 


Brahmanism, 83 
Brotherhood, Islam on human, 
129, 130 

Bukra-inshallnh, 47, 50 
Byzantine, 7 

Caesar, 43 

Cairo, University of, 144 
Caliphate, see Khalifate 
Campbell’s, R. J., conception 
of God, 36 
Cannibals, Bonnie, 22 
Carlyle, 43, 52 
Christ, 30, 43 
Confession of Faith, 84-86 
Cordova, University of, 144 
Corinthians, First Epistle to, x 

Dante, 142 
David, 71 

Decrees, Islamic theory of, 77-80 
Deliverance, the Day of, 27 
Diodorus Siculus, 6 
Duotheism, Magio-Mosaic, 30 

Eber, 71 
Elijah, 71 
Elisha, 71 
Eloah, 31 
Enoch, 71 
Eschatology, 74 
Evil, Islamic conception of, ex¬ 
plained, 58, 59 
Ezra, 30 

Fasting, Islamic theory of, 91, 92 

Fatima, 154 

Fetishism, 22 

Firdoushi, 145 

Fisk, Dr. Eugene, 89 

Galileo, 43 
Gathas, 29 
Ghassdlas, 6 
Ghazzali, 76 




158 THE MESSAGE OF MOHAMMED 


Goethe, 43 

Government, Islamic theory of, 
103-105 

Hadith, 13 7 
Hafiz, 145 
Halal, 122 
Hallam, 53 
Haram, 122, 123 
Havelock Ellis, 141, 143 
Haug, Dr. Martin, 77 
Hebrews, the Epistle to the, 73 
Heroes and Hero-Worship, Car¬ 
lyle’s, 43, 52 

Hero of the Afghan Frontier, 
Pennell’s, 124 
Hira, Mount, 11, 14, 155 
Hobal, the great god, 6, 22 
Homer, 43 
Hossain, 154 
Houris, 75 
Hussites, 141 

I bits, 57, 58 
Idolatry, discussed, 22 
Ijma, 137 
Imams, 13 7 

Irving, Washington, ix, 70 
Isaac, 71 
Ishmael, 71 

Islam, derivation discussed, 
42-44 

Jabr, 49 
Jacob, 6, 71 
Jafar, 101, 102 
Jahannam, 75 
fannat, 75 
Jehovah, 30 

Jellaluddin Rumi, 18, 154 

Jerusalem, 107 

Jethro, 71 

Jinns, 57, 66 

Job, 71 

Johnson, viii 

John the Baptist, 71 

Jonah, 71 

Joseph, 71 

Judgment, Islamic theory of, 
73-75 

Justinian, the Law of, no 

Kaabh, the ancient, 6, 92, 93 
Kalamu'illah, 67 


Kalimet, 21, 70, 85 
Kayna, 7 

Kemal Pasha, Mustapha, 62, 
98, 154 
Kerbalah, 107 
Khadijah, 10, 13, 19, 116 
Khalifate, theory of, explained, 
105-109 

Khalifate, importance of, dis¬ 
cussed, 150, 151 
Koelle, x, 53 

Koran, discussed, 68, 69, 70 

Laws, Islamic, discussed, 119- 

123 

Leviticus, 122 

Life Extension Institute of New 
York, 89 

Life of Mahomet, Irving’s, 70 
Lollards, 142 
Lot, 71 

Mago-Zoroastrians, 29 
Marid, 66 

Marriage in Islam, 120-122 
Mary, 30 

Mather Marshall, 2 
Mazzini, 132 
Mecca, described, 6 
Medes, the ancient, no 
Medina Mission, success due to, 
152 

Methuselah, 71 
Middle Ages, Hallam’s, 53 
Mohammedanism Unveiled, For¬ 
ster’s, 148 

Mohammed’s marriages dis¬ 
cussed, x14-116 
Moses, 30, 71 

Motto of Christianity, 153 
Motto of Islam, 153 
Muaz, 139, 140 

Muir, Sir William, x, 44, 45, 121 
Mujtahids, 137 
Mumbo-Jumbo, 22 
Musa, 154 

Mutazalite doctors, 114 
Nabi, 70 

Namus-i-Akbar, 14 
Napoleon, 43 
Negus, 101 
Newton, 43 





INDEX 


I 59 


New World of Islam, Stoddard’s, 

141 

Nicene Creed, 30 
Nicholas V., Pope, 142 
Noah, 71 

Obadiah, 71 

Ohud, the disastrous field of, 52 
Omar Khayyam, 145 

Palgrave, 32, 44, 45 
Paul, St., x 
Pentateuch, 138 
Pickthall, Marmaduke, 70 
Pilgrimage, Islamic theory of, 
92-95 

Polygamy, Islamic ideas of, 
discussed, 111-114 
Prayers, Islamic theory of, 86-90 

Qiyas, 13 7 

Rabb, discussed, 31 
Rajim, 66 
Ramazan, 91 
Rasul, 70 
Reland, ix 

Religious Tolerance and Islam, 
125 

Renaissance, the need of Islamic, 
141-143 

Renan on the University of 
Cordova, 144 

Resurrection, Islamic theory of, 
77 

Rise and Decline of Islam, Sir 
W. Muir’s, 121 
Ruskin, on portraiture, xiii 

Sadaqah, 90 
Sale’s Koran, 94 
Salerno, 144 
Sanai, 76 

Scriptures, Islamic theory of, 
66-69 


Selections from the Coran, Sir 
W._Muir’s, 44 
Shaitan, 57 
Sibghah, 86 

Slavery and Islam, 116-119 
Socrates, 43 
Solomon, 71 

Spirit of Islam, Ameer Ali’s, 45, 
46, 113, 115, 146, 147 
Sullivan’s, E. J., Frontispiece 
explained, xii, xiii 
Swemer, 53 
Symbology, 23 
Syria, 7, 9 

Tafwiz, 49 
Taj Mahal, 145 
Talmud, 138 
Taqwd, 85 

Ten Great Religions, Clarke’s, 44 
Totems, 23 
Trajan, 142 

Tritheism, Paulo-Christian, 30 

Ummi, 72 
Ummu'l Kitab, 67 
Usury, Islam on, 120 

Visions of Mohammed, discussed, 
15, 16 

Wahabites, 141 
Waraka, 14, 15, 19 
War and the Soul, R. J. Camp¬ 
bell’s, 36 

Warfare, Islam on, 123-125 
Watchwords of Islam, 152 
Women’s position in Islam, 
110-116 

Zachariah, 71 
Zakdt, 90 
Zarathushtra, 77 
Zem-Zem, the Spring of, 6 
Zoroastrianism, 90 


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